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Avoid the temptation

Watch a video of children taking the marshmallow test today and one thing becomes obvious: the more exposure to the marshmallow they let themselves have, the more likely they are to eat it. In other words, picking up and sniffing the marshmallow, or pretending to eat it, is not a strategy for staving off the temptation — it's a recipe for giving in imminently.

Kids who turned away from the marshmallow or pushed it farther away, on the other hand, were more successful. And other experiments found that if the marshmallow was covered by by a screen and the kids couldn't see it, they waited ten times longer, on average, before ringing the bell.

The reason, Mischel and other psychologists argue, is that the battle between instant gratification (one marshmallow now) and long-term prudence (two marshmallows later) is really a battle between two different systems of the brain. "There's the limbic system — the lower, more primitive brain, which responds immediately and emotionally, and allowed us as a species to survive a predator-filled environment in ancient times," Mischel says. "Then other parts of the brain, concentrated in the prefrontal cortex, allow us to do things like control our attention, and think about the future, and delay gratification." Neuroscientists often call this the brain's executive function.

In the book, Mischel likens the impulse-driven limbic system to "hot" thinking, and the slower, more rationally-driven executive function to "cool" thinking. These categories may oversimplify — in terms of the underlying brain structures — but they're still a helpful way of understanding our response to different sorts of stimuli. And various experiments have shown that exposure to the sight, smell, or taste of a temptation activate the sort of short-term "hot" thinking that make us most likely to give in to it.

There are all sorts of lessons for adults here, Mischel writes. If you're trying to quit smoking, surrounding yourself with smokers will inevitably drain your willpower and make you more likely to have a cigarette. "This is the reason why, even if you have resolutions about how many potato chips you're going to eat, once you open the bag, it's so hard to not empty it. It's because they taste good," he says. "Once you're focusing on that — rather than the long-term issues of cholesterol and obesity — it's incredibly hard to stop."

Distract yourself

One of the most amusing aspects of watching marshmallow test videos is the things kids do to occupy themselves instead of eating. "They take off their shoes and play with their toes as if they were piano keys. They're inventing little songs, or exploring their nasal cavities," Mischel says. Sometimes, "they engage in Charlie Chaplin-like monologues, reminding themselves, 'If I ring the bell, then I don't get the two marshmallows.'"

These sorts of activities are adorable. But they're also an interesting look at a crucial strategy. In a sense, it's the flip side of avoiding temptation: distracting oneself by doing or thinking about something else entirely.

When children were told to conjure a fun memory, they waited ten times longer than otherwise

In experiments, when the researchers suggested that the children conjure a fun memory before leaving them alone, the kids waited about ten times longer before ringing the bell than otherwise. On the other hand, suggesting that the kids think about the delicious taste of the marshmallow pretty much guaranteed they'd ring the bell or eat it immediately.

The lesson is that daydreaming or distracting yourself — instead of directly thinking about the temptation — is a way of quelling the sort of "hot" thinking that leads to giving in. This, too, can be useful to adolescents and adults as well as five-year-olds, regardless of the temptation at hand.

Mentally transform your temptation

One of factors that helped kids most effectively delay gratification was remarkably simple. "If the child looked at the cookie but pretended it weren't real — they were told beforehand to put an imaginary picture frame around it and pretend it was just a picture — the child who would previously ring the bell within 30 seconds could now wait 10 or 15 minutes, on average," Mischel says.

Simply transforming the desired object inside your brain affects your response to it — and how much willpower it will require to abstain. An adult might not be as easily persuaded that a tempting item is simply a picture, but it can be transformed in plenty of other ways. "For instance, instead of a drug being a fantastic high, pretend it's a poison," Mischel says. "How you think about it makes a huge difference in cooling your desire for it."

This sort of mental transformation is often more effective than thinking about long-term consequences. "To cool your desire for a piece of chocolate fudge, instead of thinking about your next blood test, just imagine that a cockroach nibbled on it," Mischel suggests. This is why, in other countries, cigarette packs often come with graphic photos of cancer-scarred lungs, rather than mere text.

Many psychologists argue that our sense of disgust evolved to protect us from unsanitary foods. If that's the case, triggering a feeling of disgust might be effective because it taps into the power of the impulse-driven "hot" thinking, but instinctively pushes us in the opposite direction.

This sort of thinking can even be leveraged to make long-term priorities seem more like urgent temptations. One recent study, for instance, found that people committed 30 percent more money towards their 401(k) savings accounts if they saw a photo of themselves that had been digitally altered to look about 68 years old. Just being able to see themselves in old age made the need to save for retirement seem much more urgent.

Create an "if-then" plan

"If-then" planning is now a tenet of many productivity coaches, but Mischel observed it way back in the 1970s, as part of an experiment that came shortly after the marshmallow tests.

In the experiment, four- and five-year-olds were put in a room with something called Mr. Clown Box — essentially, a talking, light-up box with toys that invited kids to come play with it. Like the marshmallow test, they were told that if they could ignore the short-term temptation (and complete a more boring task), they'd be rewarded later (by getting to play with both the clown and other toys).

These young children understandably had a tough time completing their boring task. But they were dramatically more successful when the researchers suggested that if the clown talked to them, they should do something specific, like turn away from it, or tell it to shut up. In essence, this is rudimentary "if-then" planning — explicitly creating a plan to follow in the event of a specific stimulus.

"The lesson that comes out of that, and has now been studied by other people in great detail, is that very simple "if-then" plans work," Mischel says. "For instance, 'If the alarm rings at 7:00, then I will get out of bed — I won't hit snooze. If I am working on a homework assignment, then I will turn off my phone.'"

This seems simple, but research has shown it's dramatically more effective than vaguer sorts of resolutions on a consistent basis. One study found that 91 percent of participants who created an if-then exercise plan ('If it's a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, then I will go to the gym') stuck with it, compared with just 39 who created a vague plan ('I will go to the gym more often'). "Articulating targeted plans beforehand, based on the areas of our lives in which we want to exert self-control, makes a huge difference," Mischel says.

Minimize stress

Many different experiments have shown that, both in kids and adults, high levels of stress increase the chance we'll give in to short-term "hot" impulses instead of prioritizing long-term "cool" thinking. fMRI studies have also shown that stress affects the prefrontal cortex — the region most heavily involved in long-term thinking — more detrimentally than any other area of the brain.

Over time, chronic levels of high stress appear to alter the structure of this area, disrupting someone's baseline capacity to engage in long-term thinking even on a non-stressful day. "Kids who are living under chronic stress have to get help in having that reduced to do well in school," Mischel says. In other words, children dealing with a difficult home life can't just suddenly turn on the ability to control themselves and concentrate on a lesson when they enter the schoolhouse door. (Somewhat related is the fact that, as Mischel found and other scientists have since confirmed, kids growing up in unstable home settings are less likely to delay gratification for a good reason: there's no guarantee that an adult is telling the truth about the two marshmallows later.)

This goes for adults as well, and explains why many of us find ourselves giving in to temptation during difficult times — whether it's something as mundane as stress-eating or more destructive long-term decisions.

Self-control is more important than you realize

The marshmallow test is famous not because of the self-control strategies it's taught us, but because of the striking way it has served as an indicator of its subjects long-term success.

"We found that there are correlations between the number of seconds a child delayed the marshmallow for, and outcomes in early adolescence, including early SAT scores, and teacher and parent ratings of how well the children were doing socially and cognitively in their teens," Mischel says. Teens who had waited longer for the marshmallow also reported they were better at dealing with stress and frustration.

Adults who had waited longer as children were better at pursuing long-term goals

Later, the researchers found, adults who had waited longer reported they were better at pursuing long term goals and were found to have lower body mass indexes and were less likely to use drugs. Even more recently, brain scans of the adults who'd waited longest as kids and those who waited least showed differences in prefrontal cortex activity.

In short, being able to choose two marshmallows later instead of one marshmallow now turns out to be crucial in navigating many of life's biggest challenges. "The stuff needed to delay gratification on the marshmallow test — namely, executive function — is exactly what's needed for school success," Mischel says. Kids who have that are "ready to learn, to focus on the teacher, to concentrate, to not become distracted, to keep the goal in mind."

This also applies to many other areas. "As we grow up, we have to deal with not only not gobbling up every temptation that's in sight, but we have to be able to control our negative emotions," Mischel says. "We won't do well in kindergarten if, every time we become angry, we punch everyone around us. So the ability to recognize and inhibit one's own negative emotions is another part of executive function."

But self-control isn't a fixed trait

This is the thing that many people have gotten wrong about the marshmallow test. It may be true that, on the whole, children who waited longer for the marshmallow did better, by some measures, later in life.

But the test wasn't designed to "pass" or "fail" kids. It was designed to see what circumstances and strategies make delaying easier, and which make it harder. And more than anything, it shows that self-control is a mutable skill that's highly dependent on the choices we make and the conditions we find ourselves in. It's not a fixed trait like height or eye color, but something that we can all constantly work on — like, say, the ability to play the piano.

"For me, the marshmallow test is not an indicator that our futures are already determined when we're four years old, but that our potential for maximizing our lives involves a set of skills that are already visible and teachable at age four," Mischel says. "[It] involves a set of skills that can be taught, and learned. They're acquirable. Nothing is predetermined."