In the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1972), Professor Walter Mischel gave four year-old children a marshmallow, and instructed them that if they waited twenty minutes without eating it, they would be given another one. Mischel observed that although some would “cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can’t see the tray, others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal”, a few would simply eat the marshmallow as soon as the researchers left. This experiment gave insight into the development of delayed or deferred gratification, and we decided to test out the task on our own two girls. First, Cara, who is age 4: the same age as those in the original experiment. We left her in the room for ten minutes with the sweetie. Although the camera battery didn’t last the duration of the time, here’s a short clip.
When I came into the room after ten minutes, she was sitting on the chair, the sweetie unopened, with a big smile on her face. When we asked her about her time in the room, she said she hadn’t even touched the sweetie. Apart from a brief trip across to the window to see if we were outside (we heard her walking across from downstairs), she’d been sitting down the whole time. I was amazed that for a girl who ordinarily would hate being put in a room on her own for an extended period, she was so focussed throughout the task. We tried Felicity, too, although she’s only 2 years old. Here’s the first part of her five minutes:
Listening from outside the door, we heard her pick up the sweetie after a couple of minutes, and tap it on the plate. However, she didn’t open it, and when we went in, was holding it in her hand, safe, but undamaged. Believe me — for our two year old, this is an incredible result.
Thinking about the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment makes me consider reasons why both our girls were, like a third of Mischel’s original subjects, so successful at delaying their gratification. The psychology of the experiment is powerful — this task produced unusual results in our girls. If you watch carefully both videos, especially Cara’s, you’ll see our girls looking at the camera. Although they were alone in the room, there was a witness — and a reason to obey.
Here’s my hypothesis. The LDS Church focuses on ‘obedience [as] the first law of heaven’ and commandments that seem otherwise abstract (coffee prohibition, no shopping on Sunday, etc) in order to develop an ability for deferred gratification. Of course, lots of religions and societies do similar things: but the LDS Church has been significantly more successful/focussed on this, with results that set it apart from other social institutions. These results include the financial strength of the Church: members who are less likely to spend on ‘selfish’ pleasures will be more willing to pay their tithing and offerings, and earn money to raise the larger families that will, in turn, strengthen Church membership in the future.
I think it’s possible to interpret LDS teachings in a different way from this, for sure. However, in the wards I grew up in, the teachings were filtered through a kind of ‘working class’ narrative, that magnifies and accentuates these messages. It’s easy to see why, especially in the historically stratified United Kingdom, society would benefit from having its working people routinely favour deferred gratification over pleasure. The whole social structure depends on their willingness to produce economically useful labour, and not spark social unrest because of their existence at the bottom of the social pile. Of course, beer has traditionally played a role in maintaining this status quo, but for Mormons this doesn’t apply. Work, and more work — like the Puritans before, narrative is the answer. LDS theology is, I think, designed to function especially well in tandem with ‘working class’ narratives. It gives a kind of satisfaction for those who could find no other. However, in the Western world we are entering a time of the expansion of a now almost-universal middle class. The game is changing.
Now, I don’t want to give you the impression that I only see one side of the pancake. Of course, deferred gratification is an important aspect of mature psychology. We all learn to put off what we want now, for what we want most. Yet, I suggest, it’s possible to take deferred gratification to a level where we no longer ‘delay’, but, indeed, ‘defer’ our pleasure to another life, always putting off that marshmallow in favour of production, collection, amassing.
What’s more, I think LDS/working class theology encourages this, and I am surrounded by very good people, who (metaphorically speaking) use the ‘marshmallow’ to spur themselves onwards, without ever partaking. In this model, the dreams of pleasure and peace become carrots that dangle in front of us perpetually, never arriving, never being enjoyed for more than a tiny moment — enough to tantalise, and not satisfy.
Now onto larger social and philosophical questions: do we see satisfaction as immoral? Is achieving a state of satisfaction selfish, or does it make us lazy? I believe that I absorbed these ideas, and only in recent years started to learn how to — once I’ve waited a while — really enjoy a good marshmallow. The result? I think this change actually makes us more productive in the long term, as our bodies learn that significant and satisfying pleasure follows deferral of our gratification. For those who have lost the pleasure of life, it doesn’t take a mid-life crisis to see: two marshmallows in the hand are worth a hundred in the bush, or in other words, there’s an optimum level of delayed gratification, and we shouldn’t make the mistake of deferring indefinitely.
So where does this leave the LDS Church? Well, I believe the Church is very good at evolving to fit its social reality, and as much as it will (for obvious reasons) resist the change that will see its members become less directly obedient and economically productive, it will adapt. The result, happily, will be that to those outside the Church, LDS people will become more comprehensible — not participating in an outdated model that sacrifices the fulfilment and actualisation of the individual for some higher narrative, but people whose life narratives harmonise into a society that benefits mutually.
So pass round the marshmallows! You’ve walked a long way to be here, and it’s time to celebrate our community.
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I vote to enjoy the marshmallow, “shopping on Sunday.”
I found it very interesting and the findings are amusing. I am not convinced however, that the hypothesis regarding religious obedience is correct.
Deferred gratification is something our mind has the capacity to learn early in life. Obedience is perhaps the early learning mechanism in the developing mind, to learn the benefits which deferred gratification has. Learningthe cause and effect and the influence we have on our environment. However, as the mind understands this process, the tool of obedience in the hands of parents becomes less important. Mutual understanding, experience, reason, trust and respect replaces obedience. Obedience becomes a byproduct which was vital during our developmental stages of brain development for a learning aid, and for parents to protect children.
Religion, at least from an Mormon perspective, teaches that obedience is the first law of heaven, and in fact most often we don’t know why we must obey, other than; “its a commandment”. . . as if its a higher law to obey without reasoning why!
I suppose the deferred gratification for obeying anything and everything in church is ‘Eternal Life’. But that’s just like me commanding my children to obey me and do everything I tell them ‘blindly’ for a whole year, because I say so — less they get nothing from Santa on Christmas day. This is exploitation of the obedience instinct, which ought to have naturally be replaced for reasoning and deduction in the adult mind.
Obedience probably has other benefits working parallel with other processes of the mind for learning, but my intention in this blog is to recognise how the obedience module, instinct in all human beings ought not to be abused, due to the one way agreement it tends to have. “Obey me because I say so”!
What interests me is not why the child learns deferred gratification? That’s easy, its self evident. What interests me is — why is it intrinsic to the mind? Why did our genes evolve a brain with the intrinsic set of algorithms to process the information to comprehend the cause and effect this way?
Chimps seem to have evolved a completely different set of algorithms of learning when given these tests. Chimps will learn patterns for deferred gratification but only if they have learnt first that deferring will gain greater gratification. If you try and teach a chimp to obey for ‘obedience sake’, it will be much harder. Learning just for the sake of learning patterns is not part of their psychology. It’s really interesting learning the differences between chimpanzees and human information processing.
See the YouTube clip below for a quick demonstration.
Thanks for your response, David. I think what you’re describing actually doesn’t disagree with my hypothesis. I agree that religions use (or ‘hijack’ – a less generous term) biological mechanisms designed for use during early life, as do parents who abuse their authority.
I’m also interested in the evolutionary reasons for the development of these tendencies – and why, although many of us can defer our gratification, there’s a range of different responses and abilities to do so when this tendency is filtered through social narrative. So our biology can be ‘rewired’ to do something different, when we have powerful stories modifying them.
That’s why it’s so important, I think, for us in the twenty-first century, to use our access to information to distinguish narratives that function well and have a good chance of doing so throughout our lives, from those that are malignant and dysfunctional. We can get clues about this by listening to our bodies, which will often tell us when we’re living in narratives that don’t work.
Sorry, I didn’t include the YouTube link in my last post referring the chimpanzees vs human learning .
Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHuagL7x5Wc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I do believe we are in agreement on the negative effects obedience has. Obedience is perhaps an unbalanced form of cooperation to a dominant force or authority.
I find that when a child understands the cause and effect of their desires, and both the parent and the child’s desires are understood and inline, obedience is not the mechanism of intent within the child’s mind. This perhaps is a result of parents instinctively using obedience as a necessary tool for the child – to learn causes and effects leading to desire fulfillment. When the child learns causes and effects by being obedient, they start to understand how they can manipulate the world which can be contrary to their wellbeing, resulting in a dysfunctional relationship. A transition from obedience to respect, undetsting and trust must be developed so that positive suggestions and acceptance can be established.
Obedience will always have a negative consequence on the obedient, if the intentions of both party’s are not inline. If the intentions of both party’s are inline, obedience is not the mechanism of intent, but an agreement or acceptance to a suggestion. We see the power of suggestion and acceptance to suggestions demonstrated in the Milgram experiment, and also in hypnosis.
I am very interested in the mechanisms at work in the mind. The line between obedience… obeying a dominant authority figure without knowledge of cause and effect. And the power of acceptance to a suggestion from a dominant authority figure, understanding the desired cause and effect. Both can appear to be ‘Obedience’ from a third person perspective, however, the mechanism of intent in the mind of each is very different.
Both forms of control can be used for evil deeds. The power of acceptance to a bad idea or suggestion is the most potent form of manipulation in my opinion, and is not strictly obedience by definition.
Obviously these are just my opinions and welcome your comments, personal observations and experience.
Andy, I’ve gotta come clean and just say that I’ve watched the videos 2 times each and am so distracted by how cute your girls are AND by the fact that they DIDN’T eat the treat that I can’t even contemplate the rest of your post.
Ah, distraction: a key tool in the delayed gratification toolbox. I hope you’ll come back later to claim your prize of the rest of my post! :D
Oh, man, I watched both videos again after leaving that comment. They really are so cute. And really, I’m shocked that they both just sat there. I don’t recall our kids ever sitting anywhere for 5 minutes. Also, I confess that I am totally enamored by their (and your and Helen’s!) British accents.
Andy, this comment of yours literally made me laugh out loud. Love the post :)
Ha- I love the part where she tries really hard not to look at it (Flissy that is). Those are REALLY long time periods…. 10 minutes with Cara? Wow.
As for delayed gratification, I’m a big believer. Not sure how much if it is my Mormon upbringing and how much is midwestern work ethic. It’s hard to tease out. Does the overlap in values have to do with why people find Mormonism appealing?
I really think so, Claire – and no doubt, there’s a lot of good that comes through the ability to be able to do this. But it’s so useful an ability, that I think it’s easy to take it to less useful extremes of application.
I’d be interested if other people have more experience with non-‘working class’ LDS narratives, and ways in which gratification may be experienced differently through Mormonism – ?