Delayed Gratification

"Good things come to those who wait." This was one of my mother's mantras. I think most of us, at some level, believe in the power of delayed gratification. If I forego my pleasures now, I'll enjoy even more pleasures in the future. For some it's even a moral value, one grounded in common sense. After all, even science has concluded that the ability and willingness to delay gratification is a boon to those who learn its lessons.

Many of us are familiar with the famous marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification, first performed in 1970 at Stanford University in which young children were left alone in a room with a marshmallow. They were told they could eat the marshmallow, but if they waited 15 minutes they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. Perhaps you've seen videos of similar experiments. It's cute, and so incredibly human, to watch the children squirm as they try to resist temptation and earn their reward. They look away, they touch the marshmallow, play with it, some even lick it, but many, after what appear to be heroic efforts, give in and eat the marshmallow before the experimenter returns. 

The researchers kept track of the participants over the next couple decades and concluded that the ability to delay gratification was predictive of better outcomes later in life, like higher SAT scores, better educational attainment, healthier body weight, and increased future income. This experiment and its conclusions are regularly cited in education and parenting advice right up to this today . . . despite the fact that they have been decisively debunked.

A much larger follow up study, for instance, found the predictive power to be, at best, half of what Stanford researchers concluded and that the children's social and economic backgrounds played a much stronger predictive role than willpower. A 2020 UCLA study of the original marshmallow test subjects (now in their mid-40's) found that childhood delay times forecast nothing about future adult behaviors and outcomes. Subsequent studies have likewise disproved all or part the original marshmallow experiment conclusions.

We now know much more about how brains work than the Stanford researchers did. For instance, we know that immediate gratification provides a dopamine hit, which, in turn, makes us crave another. This suggests that, contrary to "common sense," not only have we evolved for immediate gratification, self-denial is a rebellion against Mother Nature. 

Okay, so delayed gratification is not favored by human biology, but certainly, common sense tells us, it matters elsewhere. Our economic theories assert, for instance, that today's pinched pennies will be rewarded with a tomorrow's prosperity. But as writer Marina Benjamin asserts, "Deferring reward only makes rational sense if you believe that our economies will boom for decades to come and the planet will miraculously heal itself and continue to support us -- beliefs that, in this current climate, seem naïve . . . The marshmallow, it turns out, does not hold the key to our destiny."

Our religions tell us that today's suffering will be rewarded in heaven. I can't speak directly to this because faith is a personal thing, but I find it hard to swallow when certain of my religious friends insist that their god has filled this world with things that feel good, but only as temptations. Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as having said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Insert "marshmallows" for beer and it makes the same point. To my mind, it's far more likely that the deities and Mother Nature are allies when it comes to delayed gratification. Indeed, it seems incredibly ungrateful of us to not enjoy the pleasures and balms this world provides. 

Science, as a process, has moved on from the marshmallow experiment conclusions about delayed gratification, but "common sense" continues to cling to it at least in part because our economic theories and religious doctrines support it, but mostly, I think, out of the inertia of habit.

I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm sure there are plenty of arguments in favor to delayed gratification that I've not considered here, but my point is that perhaps we should consider that this remains an unsettled question and not judge others, especially our children, when they make the choice we would not. It's likely that, as with most things, it's a question of balance and specific circumstances. Perhaps there simply is no "rule" that we can, across the board, apply to whether we choose immediate or delayed gratification. 

If I found myself participating in the marshmallow experiment, let me assure you, I'd eat that thing before the researcher had left the room, mostly because I've learned that more than one tends to make me queasy so why wait? But more to the point, I've lived long enough to know that sometimes good things do come to those who wait, but just as often all they don't, and then I've missed out on the happiness that was right there in front of me. As the saying goes, "Life is uncertain. Eat desert first."

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