Mischel’s Marshmallows

Summary

---

Radiolab: "Mischel’s Marshmallows"

Date: March 9, 2009
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Special Guests: Walter Mischel (psychologist, Columbia University), Joan Allaire (science writer)

---

Overview

This episode explores the famous "marshmallow test" developed by psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960s—a remarkable experiment designed to understand willpower and delayed gratification in children. The hosts, alongside Walter Mischel and Joan Allaire, dissect the experiment’s surprising long-term findings: the ability to delay gratification at age four seemed to predict future success, academic performance, and even body weight decades later. The conversation pivots to whether willpower is innate or can be taught, and what this means for us all.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin of the Marshmallow Experiment

[02:07 – 04:05]

• Walter Mischel explains: The experiment was inspired by observing his own daughters, particularly noting a big developmental leap in self-control around age four.
• Mischel set up a simple test with nursery school children at Stanford, offering a choice: one marshmallow now or two later, requiring the child to wait in an empty room.
• Host commentary: The experimental conditions were designed to be "pure agony" for kids, with no distractions—just the marshmallow's pull.

Quote:

• “Now that creates a lot of dilemmas.” — Walter Mischel [03:39]

2. Observing Kid Strategies (and Failures)

[04:12 – 06:14]

• The children adopted various strategies to distract themselves from eating the marshmallow (later, Oreo). These included sniffing, singing, turning away, or even cheating.
• Video descriptions: Some kids caved quickly, some lasted much longer, and many had creative tricks to make waiting easier.

Quote:

• “Some, to avoid the pull, went under the table. Some turned their backs and started singing a song.” — Jad Abumrad [05:32]

3. The Surprising Predictive Power of Willpower

[06:23 – 10:16]

• Years later, Mischel noticed a pattern: kids who waited longer for the treat were doing better in school.
• Mischel tracked down the original kids as teens and adults. Not only did "high delayers" have higher SAT scores (by as much as 210 points [08:22]), but they were also better behaved, less likely to be bullies, more likely to finish school, have better jobs, and even have lower BMI.
• The correlation stunned both researchers and hosts.

Quote:

• “The difference in the SAT scores is 210 points.” — Joan Allaire [08:22]

4. Nature, Nurture, and the Power of Tricks

[10:26 – 14:01]

• The hosts raise the question: Is this ability hardwired, or is willpower a teachable skill?
• Analysis of the experiment videos shows that all kids struggled—those who waited simply had better distraction strategies.
• The idea of "hot" (temptation-focused) versus "cold" (mentally distancing from the treat) thinking emerges. Many successful kids pretended the marshmallow was something else or used imagination to reduce its allure.
• Crucially: Mischel found he could teach kids tricks to improve their self-control in the experiment, such as imagining the treat as a picture.

Quotes:

• “The best kids simply had a better bag of tricks.” — Joan Allaire [12:25]
• “You can teach just that simple suggestion. Why don't you just pretend it's a picture frame?” — Joan Allaire [12:55]

5. Limits of Teaching Tricks & Unresolved Questions

[13:06 – 14:06]

• While tricks work in lab settings, Joan Allaire points out there’s no evidence yet that these skills transfer to real-life accomplishments.
• The real impact of teaching self-control strategies remains an open research question.

Quote:

• “You can’t go around drawing picture frames all day long.” — Joan Allaire [13:35]

6. Nature and Nurture—An Interactive Picture

[14:06 – 14:25]

• Walter Mischel’s conclusion: Willpower comes from a mix of genetics ('wiring') and environment/experience, dynamically shaping each other.

Quote:

• “The wiring and the experience are interacting and changing each other.” — Walter Mischel [14:06]

7. Outliers and Hope

[14:25 – 14:56]

• Robert Krulwich offers a wry personal take, reassuring listeners that early failures in self-control don’t doom a person for life—outliers exist.

Quote:

• “Before people take Mr. Mishal's views too close to heart, remember, there are outliers.” — Robert Krulwich [14:54]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | 03:39 | “Now that creates a lot of dilemmas.” | Walter Mischel | | 05:32 | “Some, to avoid the pull, went under the table. Some turned their backs and started singing a song.” | Jad Abumrad | | 08:22 | “The difference in the SAT scores is 210 points.” | Joan Allaire | | 12:25 | “The best kids simply had a better bag of tricks.” | Joan Allaire | | 12:55 | “You can teach just that simple suggestion. Why don't you just pretend it's a picture frame?” | Joan Allaire | | 13:35 | “You can’t go around drawing picture frames all day long.” | Joan Allaire | | 14:06 | “The wiring and the experience are interacting and changing each other.” | Walter Mischel | | 14:54 | “Before people take Mr. Mishal's views too close to heart, remember, there are outliers.” | Robert Krulwich |

---

Episode Flow & Structure

1. Introduction to willpower and New Year’s resolutions (00:32–01:23)
2. Mischel’s marshmallow experiment background and setup (02:07–04:12)
3. Kids’ strategies and behaviors in the study (04:12–06:14)
4. Long-term predictive findings and follow-ups (06:23–10:16)
5. Discussing nature vs. nurture in willpower (10:26–13:41)
6. Limits and open research questions (13:41–14:06)
7. Final thoughts on outliers and not taking results as destiny (14:25–14:56)

---

Tone & Style

The conversation is lively, curious, and open-ended, with frequent humorous asides and genuine wonder from the hosts. The show maintains a friendly, inquisitive, and non-dogmatic approach—inviting listeners to keep questioning even as it shares compelling science.

---

For New Listeners

Even if you’ve never heard of the marshmallow test, this episode captures the essence: self-control in childhood has astonishing predictive power for future success. But it’s not destiny. The evidence suggests we can learn the tricks of willpower—and possibly teach them to future generations.

Transcript

[Walter Mischel]

If your small business is booming, you might say, cha ching. But you should say, like a good.

[Robert Krulwich]

Neighbor, State farm is there.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we'll help your growing business.

[Walter Mischel]

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. I shite.

[Joan Allaire]

You're listening to Radio, the podcast from.

[Walter Mischel]

New York Public Radio. Public Radio, wny.

[Jad Abumrad]

Npr. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast. And let me just throw something out here to set up what is going to be an awesome podcast. New Year's resolutions. Okay, yes. Now, I know that's a few months out of date, but that's exactly my point. By now, most of us are the same old schmucks that we were last year. We've completely forgotten about all the promises we made to ourselves. We've slipped back into old patterns. How are you doing?

[Robert Krulwich]

Out of curiosity, I didn't make any, so I don't have any problem with them at all. But had I made them in previous years I did, I would have long since failed.

[Jad Abumrad]

Long since failed. Now, do you ever wonder why, with things like New Year's resolutions, which require willpower, why none of us are any good?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, I'm not sure. None of us. I know people I'm married to. A person who seems to be able to make a resolution and fiercely, indeterminately stick to it.

[Jad Abumrad]

See, there you go. See, some of us can do it, some of us can't.

[Robert Krulwich]

Because I was born under a dark star.

[Jad Abumrad]

There you go. There you go. See, the real question is, are some of us just doomed because we're born under a dark star to not have willpower while others do have it? Or is it something that can be taught? Do you ever wonder about that?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello. Test, test, test, test, test.

[Walter Mischel]

So you're monitoring the sound?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, I want to introduce you to somebody. His name's Walter, Walter Michel.

[Walter Mischel]

He's a psychologist at Columbia University in the psychology department.

[Joan Allaire]

So what's going to happen is.

[Jad Abumrad]

And if you've ever asked yourself questions about willpower, like, what is it exactly? How does it work? If I don't have it, can I get it? Well, he has done a remarkable study. So are we ready to go on the marshmallow study?

[Walter Mischel]

The marshmallow study.

[Jad Abumrad]

At the start of the study, how did you come up with the idea?

[Walter Mischel]

Well, I had three little girls who, at that time, we're talking now, late 60s, were going from being these sweet sometimes and yappy often, you know, little creatures.

[Jad Abumrad]

How old were they at that point?

[Walter Mischel]

Well, they ranged in age from 2 to 5. And what I was. What any parent immediately knows is that when kids start going into the fourth year of life, a lot happens to them.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like, he noticed that one of his daughters who had just hit four, suddenly she could delay gratification almost all of a sudden. If he told her, look, I know you want that, I don't know, pack of bubble gum, but don't whine, don't complain, when we get home, I'll give you something better. Suddenly, she could wait.

[Walter Mischel]

This was in the late 1960s, and there was almost no work on, quote, willpower or self control or self regulation. It just wasn't a topic.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he thought he would jump in. Here's what he did. To test this hypothesis that something happens to kids around the age of four, he went to a nursery school.

[Walter Mischel]

Being nursery school at Stanford University, gathered.

[Jad Abumrad]

Up a bunch of kids of different ages, and one by one, he put.

[Walter Mischel]

Them in a room, small room off the playroom.

[Jad Abumrad]

He'd bring the kids in, sit them in a chair, and then he would give them a choice, which had to do with marshmallows.

[Walter Mischel]

Yummy.

[Jad Abumrad]

What kid doesn't love marshmallows? And he would say to them, here's your choice.

[Walter Mischel]

You can either have one, one marshmallow.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, or if you wait, you can.

[Walter Mischel]

Have two, two marshmallows later. Now that creates a lot of dilemmas.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, it does. Especially because, you know, the researchers would leave the room to give the kids a chance to think. And right there on the table in front of the child were the marshmallows calling them.

[Walter Mischel]

There are no distractions in the room. There are no pictures, there are no toys, no anthem. Okay, so it's basically an isolation chamber.

[Jad Abumrad]

Pure agony.

[Walter Mischel]

I can show you a video of what they're doing and you can see it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can we watch?

[Walter Mischel]

Sure. Let's turn it on.

[Jad Abumrad]

He walked over to a TV and pulled up a video of the marshmallow experiment. And I must tell you, it is some of the greatest video ever shot. Particularly because the round he showed us, the researchers had replaced the marshmallows with something even more enticing.

[Walter Mischel]

Oreo cookies.

[Jad Abumrad]

Mmm, Oreos.

[Walter Mischel]

So what you're seeing over here is a tortured looking, adorable little girl wearing.

[Jad Abumrad]

A blue sweatshirt, about five years old.

[Walter Mischel]

People kind of sniffing at it.

[Jad Abumrad]

She puts her face right up to the cookie. She's weighing. Do I want this badly enough?

[Walter Mischel]

This is exactly what she's doing.

[Jad Abumrad]

She picks up the cookie, puts it.

[Walter Mischel]

Down, weighing, and re evaluating her choice.

[Jad Abumrad]

She knows she can have this one now. But if she waits, she can have more. But I've had it. She gives in after just a few minutes. Okay, now we have a sort of doughy faced boy in a yellow T shirt who's kicking because he's so antsy. This kid's strategy is not to confront, but to kick the table that holds the cookie. Kick it, kick it, kick it.

[Walter Mischel]

It's a very male response, but remarkably.

[Jad Abumrad]

He holds out way longer than the first girl. And of course, there were the cheaters.

[Walter Mischel]

Here we see a guy looking at the two cookies. He's taken one, which is against the rules. He's licking the inside, he's licking out the cream, replacing the licked cookies cookie and putting it back on the tray.

[Jad Abumrad]

Anyhow, we watch kid after kid after kid being tortured by the gravitational pull of Oreo cookies. Some, to avoid the pull, went under the table. Some turned their backs and started singing a song. All in all, Mischel and his team tested 500 kids in that initial study and they found that, yes, four year olds are dramatically better than younger kids at resisting temptations. So something does happen at around four years old. But within that, and here's where the plot thickens, there was a huge range. Some kids gave up after a minute, others could last 20 minutes, and most fell somewhere in the middle where they could resist the cookie for about seven.

[Walter Mischel]

Minutes, eight minutes, that's the average, all depending on age and what the goodies are and so on.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, in and of itself, there's nothing too surprising here. He basically confirmed his hypothesis. But what is amazing, truly amazing, is what happens next.

[Walter Mischel]

I just was sitting around the kitchen table with my kids about five, six years after the studies be he was.

[Jad Abumrad]

Talking with his kids and he knew that they still went to school, this is now five or six years later with some of those kids from the initial study.

[Walter Mischel]

So he's asking them, you know, how is Jenny doing? And how's, you know, how's Cecily doing? This was just totally informal.

[Jad Abumrad]

His kids told him, well, Cecily's doing fine. Jenny not so good. He began to realize a weird pattern. The kids like Cecily, who he remembered had been good at waiting for the marshmallow back in the study.

[Walter Mischel]

Well, they seemed to be the ones who were doing better.

[Jad Abumrad]

They were doing better at school.

[Walter Mischel]

And suddenly, on a very small end, you know, very small sample, it looked like there were differences here. Could there be a relationship between the number of seconds these kids waited when they were 4 and how they're doing when they're 10 and 11 and 12. So what we did, beginning when these kids were 15 years old, 14 to 17 years old, was the first follow up wave.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he tracked down as many of those original kids as he could find. And just for starters, he looked at their SAT scores. Now, keep in mind, this is 10 years later in some stupid little test that a kid takes when they're four that has to do with resisting a marshmallow. And how many seconds they can resist should not, I repeat, not have anything to do with. With how they do on their SAT scores, which is one of the most important tests they're ever going to take.

[Walter Mischel]

But we found remarkable correlations between the actual SAT scores and seconds of delayed time.

[Jad Abumrad]

In other words, the kids who waited the longest when they were four staring at the Oreos did better on the SATs than the kids who just gave up immediately.

[Walter Mischel]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

How much better?

[Joan Allaire]

Significantly, the differences are so big.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Joan Allaire, science writer, often a guest on this show, who's also reporting these follow up studies.

[Joan Allaire]

You know, the difference between a kid who can wait one minute for the marshmallow and a kid who can wait 20 minutes? The difference in the SAT scores is 210 points.

[Jad Abumrad]

No way.

[Joan Allaire]

Yeah. This isn't, you know, fiddling at the margins. This is a profound difference.

[Walter Mischel]

Well above what one would expect by chance.

[Jad Abumrad]

And as they dug into the data, it turned out it went way beyond SATs. The kids who weighed it back when they were 4, now in their late.

[Joan Allaire]

Teens, parents reported they were better behaved.

[Jad Abumrad]

And on the flip side, the kids who hadn't been able to wait back in that initial study, they were more likely now to be suspended from school, to be classified as problem kids, to be, you know, the kind of kids.

[Walter Mischel]

Who were most likely to wind up as the bullies.

[Jad Abumrad]

The results were so odd and strong that Mitchell and his team decided to keep following those kids up through their teens into their 20s and 30s and beyond.

[Walter Mischel]

So this is now roughly 40 years, because they're about 44, 45 at this point. We're still in touch with over 250.

[Jad Abumrad]

And they've expanded the kind of data that they're keeping track of.

[Walter Mischel]

Everything from how well they're able to stick to goals at work, how far they go in school, even their health, for example. Body mass index, a huge amount of.

[Joan Allaire]

Data they really want to, like a map, an FBI file, so to speak.

[Jad Abumrad]

And the more data they collect, the worse it gets. The kids who could wait back when they were 4, now in their 40s, have better jobs. They've Gone farther in their education. They're even skinnier than the kids who couldn't wait. Now think about this. How much willpower you exhibit as a four year old in something so insignificant as trying to resist the pull of a marshmallow could predict this frightening amount about your life.

[Walter Mischel]

There's no question that there was something predictive about it and that it wasn't a fluke.

[Jad Abumrad]

Here's what I'm wondering. If I have a four year old and I informally give them this test and they fail, should I be worried? Do you know what I mean?

[Joan Allaire]

Yeah, you know me, I've got such a bias against these kind of rigid predictive variables when it comes to the brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Joan Allaire]

But I think these experiments have to give you pause.

[Jad Abumrad]

Because one interpretation of Mischel's work, and one we unfortunately cannot rule out, is that maybe self control is hardwired. You either have it by the age of four or you don't. And if you don't have it, statistically, you're screwed. But there's another way to interpret this. Thankfully, if willpower gets its start when you're four, which is a big if, but let's just assume for the moment it does, then you gotta ask, what exactly happens at age 4 that separates the willful from the rest of us?

[Walter Mischel]

So what you're seeing over here is a tortured looking, adorable little girl.

[Jad Abumrad]

Walter Mischel would say, go back to those videos and really look at them. If you do, much of what you'll see has very little to do with nature.

[Walter Mischel]

She's looking at it, she's withdrawing from it, and she's holding her breath.

[Jad Abumrad]

The first thing you notice, he says, is that every kid is in agony. Even the good kids, they are not models of strength. They are suffering too. Because Oreo cookies, man, they're good. Second, the very simple difference between the good kids and the bad kids seems to be that the good kids just found ways to distract themselves. They had strategies.

[Walter Mischel]

She's holding her breath, like this girl. She's saying shh to herself and stopping herself.

[Jad Abumrad]

Shushing. That seemed to work.

[Walter Mischel]

Or kicking.

[Jad Abumrad]

Kicking the table. That's actually a good strategy, he says. Or making up a tune.

[Walter Mischel]

You know, kids composing new songs, just.

[Jad Abumrad]

Turning around in the chair. Okay, we're back to girl number one. Now she has her back completely turned to the cookie.

[Joan Allaire]

Some kids actually pretended the marshmallow was a cloud.

[Walter Mischel]

I mean, the kinds of things one sees are extraordinary.

[Joan Allaire]

Or the cookie was a ufo. They turned this hot stimulus into, as Mitchell puts it, a cold.

[Jad Abumrad]

And that might Be all that separated the kids who could wait from the kids who caved.

[Joan Allaire]

The best kids simply had a better bag of tricks.

[Jad Abumrad]

And if that's all we're talking about, tricks, well, you can teach a trick.

[Joan Allaire]

You know, I think one of my favorite twists on his experiment that he did was he found that you could take kids who had trouble delaying gratification. So kids who had really had a tough time waiting for the marshmallow, and you simply say to them, put a picture frame around the marshmallow, pretend it's a picture and not a delicious piece of candy. All of a sudden, you gave kids this little trick, and you could turn low delayers into higher delayers.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, so he could help these kids.

[Joan Allaire]

Absolutely. You can teach just that simple suggestion. Why don't you just pretend it's a picture frame? He's got these bar graphs, and it's dramatic. All of a sudden, the low delayers are performing just like the high delayers.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really? And is there any evidence that if you teach these kids these low delayers and you give them these tools, that you can send their life in the right direction in some way?

[Joan Allaire]

There's no evidence of that yet. You know, he hasn't shown that simply teaching kids how to draw a picture frame around a marshmallow leads to a ballooning SAT scores. And that's where I think even Mischel admits that it remains unclear how valuable these tricks are, because you can teach, obviously, a kid a trick to deal with a marshmallow in a lab setting, but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily be able to go home. And you can't go around drawing picture frames all day long.

[Jad Abumrad]

But that's kind of the crux of it. No, I mean, you kind of have to know that these tricks are useful. Otherwise you're just picking your interpretation. You could say, oh, it's learned tricks or it's hardwired.

[Joan Allaire]

Yeah. So I think the answer to that remains completely unknown. Beginning to fly all these subjects out, do a couple days worth of brain scans. I mean, this is a big, big project. No one quite knows what they'll find.

[Walter Mischel]

I mean, I think it's highly likely to be like most things in life are turning out to be, which is, yes, the wiring makes a difference, and yes, the experience makes a difference, and the wiring and the experience are interacting and changing each other.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, Jad, I, who have never been able to withhold my fierce desire to eat all the chicken, when seven pieces of chicken are served to people, I will eat four pieces of chicken and yet somehow I have gone through most of my life holding a job, doing quite well. So, you know, I think before people take Mr. Mishal's views too close to heart, remember, there are outliers. There are people. People who have grabbed the marshmallow early and yet who have somehow thrived.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's right.

[Robert Krulwich]

I want them to know that.

[Jad Abumrad]

Anyhow, Radiolab is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Science Foundation.

[Walter Mischel]

Yay.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krolwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

See you later.