Marshmallow Test
(Photo from FamilyVolley.com)
Did you know that crows and Eurasian jays can pass a basic cognitive test as well as a human child can?
It’s called the Marshmallow Test. In essence, would a child with a marshmallow be willing to wait a little while in order to earn an extra marshmallow, or eat the one they’ve got right away? For about 50 years it has been regarded as a test of being able to defer gratification in order to get a better reward. Passing the test was supposedly a good indicator of future success in life.
Does it look like much of humanity is failing that test? We didn’t defer the gratification of ending pandemic mitigations long enough to achieve the best possible reward of stamping out or at least getting actual control of the situation. We’re doing the same about combating climate change. For example, the UK (where I live) is rewarding oil companies by letting them bypass a windfall profits tax if they pour some of their windfall profits into producing more oil and gas.
We’re eating the marshmallow in front of us instead of waiting to get the better reward. We do it time after time.
Does this mean that at a societal level, we are not as smart as a bird? Ahead of the upcoming COP27 event, the answer could be pivotal.
Not That Simple
It turns out that the Marshmallow Test doesn’t quite have the straightforward meaning everyone thought it did.
In 2018 researchers began to revisit the research, digging in more deeply.
They found a strong correlation between future success and socioeconomic status overrode the weak correlation they found with a child’s performance on the test.
More pertinent to what is happening in many societies today, researchers discovered that caring about how other people will regard what they do has a powerful impact on whether or not children will wait to get a larger reward. If told that a teacher or a peer would be notified about how long they waited, they were more likely to wait. They tended to wait much longer if a teacher would hear about it than if a peer would hear about it.
It looks like that is a factor among at least some of the people around me who aren’t willing to take health precautions any more despite knowing the risks they are taking. They see people out and about without face masks. They see photos in social media of groups gathering close together indoors as though it’s three years ago. They say everyone is doing that, so they’re doing it too.
We could get into a side conversation about how people who aren’t behaving that way aren’t out and about, and generally aren’t posting many photos of themselves staying home. Various friends and neighbors are in that category. They aren’t visible.
Can We Scale Up to Societal Level?
But for today, I’d like to consider whether perhaps we can use the findings of the newer research to get societies to defer gratification better in order to get a bigger benefit on multiple fronts.
We’re talking about high stakes at that scale. The consultancy McKinsey puts the cost of getting to global “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 at $3.5 trillion per year. That sounds staggering, but it could be done in ways that generate large economic benefits in relatively short order. For example, World Resources Institute sees $26 trillion in economic benefits through 2030, which isn’t far away. Some calculations put the economic payback period for a faster push to net zero at only a matter of several years (not generations) and from then on it would all be gravy. It isn’t very long to wait for a world-saving reward.
Can we persuade an entire society to care about its reputation as much as a child cares about a teacher’s regard? Could that be how we get an entire society to get serious about doing what it takes to help the climate, stop a pandemic, or handle whatever other big crisis can’t be dealt with quickly?
To me, it seems like countries don’t respond as much to reputational nudges as individuals do. The United Nations could be much more effective if they did. But it isn’t uncommon for the people of a country to be perceived differently from their government. During some Presidential Administrations in the USA, I’ve seen Britons draw a sharp distinction there.
Maybe governments aren’t the right place for reputation to matter enough. Maybe the people are.
For the biggest crises, we need actions by governments, but we also need the momentum of entire societies changing direction. Societies are composed of people. It’s often push-pull between governments and the societies they govern. Sometimes government makes a change of direction happen. Sometimes the society drags its government with it to make a course correction.
The study results say people often need to feel concerned about what other people will think of their actions before they can make themselves wait to get an extra marshmallow. If we want them to be peaceful, we should make violent shortcuts something that is deplored instead of cheered. If we want them to make less impact on the environment, we should to treat their efforts to do so as laudable. If we want them to take up pandemic mitigations again, we should welcome face masks, social distancing, ventilation and filtration.
Do such things with enough individuals and society will change. That’s the hypothesis, anyway.
It works with marshmallows. We just need to find a way to make it work with big stuff too.
I believe we need leaders to inspire people to do what is ethical and in the common good, rather than those who coerce by fearmongering. Our moral senses are generally developed by our families, schools and churches. Caring FOR others, not just caring ABOUT what they think of us, is a higher level of morality, since the latter often depends on fear of ostracism or punishment. The Orange POS that was the US President is a good example of how impulsivity, lack of compassion and empathy, and self-serving greed can be extremely successful in terms of wealth and power. Unfortunately, too many of my fellow 'Murikans idealize those qualities. Many of them profess to be followers of Jesus, whose words and example are exactly the opposite of the Golden-Orange Calf they worship. If Jesus can't inspire them to a higher morality, I'm not sure who can.
Hi again, Bonnie!
Thanks so much for the response back.
Here in the Great White North (Canada) It was 20 degrees in Ontario yesterday. That is summer weather in early November! And here in British Columbia, we had summer weather until November 1st, too...plus 4 months of drought, in a temperate rain forest zone. I despair. Deeply. I finally caved and started to take mild anti depressants 4 years ago, when we were choking with smoke from forest fires all around us, for the third year in a row.
Up until the last couple of decades, when the worst of global warming was hitting more equatorial regions, a lack of concern on the part of Northerners might have been passed off as a failure of imagination--a failure to imagine drought, for example, would ever effect them, long term.
The wealthy class, who control political and corporate environments have provided a cocooning effect on wealthy shareholders. They can move from one impacted area to another. They can afford the costly food that crop failures assure. And they can be relied upon to do the greedy rather than the right thing, which dovetails perfectly with the feelings of middle class hopelessness about climate and the feelings of outright hostility to the reality that some in the working class feel. They are so beset with existential problems of all kinds, its easy for Big Oil to propagandize them.
I hope you don't have me/cfs too. It's a tough one. Fortunately, I have never had worse than a moderate case, so am not entirely bedbound. That's like a slow death. And if there is physical pain on top of the profound fatigue and weakness, I honestly don't know how people with the severe type manage to carry on. Many don't. Suicides are high in this population. It is still being brushed off as psychogenic by doctors, who have not pursued the latest data.
And yes, so many who were asymptomatic with covid will be damaged. It will show up later and so far, is not reversible, no matter how many supplements one takes. Such a horrible state of affairs.
I wonder sometimes, if it isn't a Gaiian process to slow us down, reduce consumption, return the planet to homeostasis. That is the only potential positive I can see!