A thought on the New Marshmallow Test (Reliable versus unreliable parents)

October 16, 2012

I just read this article and found it really intriguing if you think about

how it applies to Nadas, Fadas, and fleas:

kids_will_delay_gratifcation_if_they_trust.html

Basically what happened here is some folks recreated the classic

" Marshmallow Test " in which a bunch of young kids were given a willpower

" test " and then studies to see how well they did scholastically a decade or

so later. Quick answer: to the classic test: more willpower = more

success, unsurprisingly.

In the recreation, however, the kids were first given exposure to an adult

who was reliable (delivered on promises) versus an adult who was unreliable

(failed to deliver on promises.) Kids who had been exposed to a reliable

adult showed a massively greater capacity for putting off short term gains

to get longer-term higher rewards, while kids who had been exposed to an

unreliable adult basically just grabbed the short term gain. Their

experience with the reliable or unreliable adult had led them to either

trust that the promised greater reward would actually appear, or led them

to believe that there would be no greater reward (that is, adults lie) so

why not grab the goods while you could? One of the most interesting things

was that the kids with a trusted adult showed much more willpower than the

original highest willpower marshmallow kids, while the kids with an

unreliable adult showed much less willpower than the original kids.

So how much of the original kids' " willpower " was actually based not on

their own inherent impulse control ability, but instead on their own

experiences regarding whether adults were, in general, reliable or not? A

kid with " poor willpower " may simply be a kid whose parents are just

basically unreliable jackasses.

It got me thinking about how growing up with very unreliable parents has

had lingering negative effects on many of us, and how those effects are

often subtle but long-ranging. And it got me wondering, too, about the

impulse-control problem that BPDs have. I'm not really one to play " blame

the parents " , but I wonder if you can cause limited genetic impulse control

to grow into a dangerous failure of willpower if you simply lie to, or

break promises to, your children a great deal? Combine a naturally low

level of impulse control with the conviction that promises of long-term

rewards are usually just so much gas, and you could have the recipe for a

serious problem developing.

It just makes me wonder...

-- Jen H.

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