Begone, Marshmallow!

One of the most renowned psychological studies is the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment from forty/fifty years ago. The results, as triumphantly tooted until the present day, "proved" that children who would wait for the second marshmallow as opposed to immediately eating the singular one resulted in higher-percentile adults in everything.

Recent work, however, is dulling the shine from these conclusions. Michael Bourne explains the limitations of the original experiment in "We Didn't Eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us." Despite the study's drawbacks in terms of diversity, which is just one factor, it became intensely popular and constantly cited. I only took a couple of college psychology classes and it came up repeatedly. 

I'm all about self-control and delayed gratification, so this marshmallow thing would really appeal to me. Yet Bourne delves into the many factors at play that were never explored: emotion, intelligence, hunger, time. But there was only one simple statement: Those who waited for a second marshmallow was obviously more disciplined and were high achievers later on. However, it is not so easy. 

The real world is fantastically complex with thousands of factors, some tiny, some enormous, acting on us every day. Did I drift in my 20s because I lacked the temperament to stick with a goal or was I merely exploring my options until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life? Is that child dropping out of school because she lacks grit and determination or is she making a rational decision that, thanks to institutional racism or endemic unemployment in her community, school just isn’t worth the effort? Either may be right. Or neither. Or both.

But that isn’t what we want to hear. We want the instant gratification of an easy answer. We want to hear that character traits can be taught like algebra and geometry and that if you can resist eating a marshmallow at 4, you possess the secret to a successful life. We want the world to be a big fluffy marshmallow, and we want to gobble it up. We want to eat the first marshmallow, but get the second one, too.

"We want the instant gratification of an easy answer." That's it. 

We want easy answers for everything. We want to look gorgeous by slapping on a single miracle product every once in a while. We want to shield ourselves from the realization that tough things can happen by blaming a little boy for his own illness. We want our bashert to walk through the door, tagged and labeled, ready for inspection.

We want complex matters to be clear-cut and self-explanatory. But as Anne Lamott said, "The opposite of faith is not doubt, it's certainty." Jews don't claim to know how God plots this world, yet we still state firmly that A caused B.

As with the marshmallow, there's more at play.