PNTV: The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel (#256)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, the Marshmallow Test. The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel. Subtitle why Self Control Is the Engine of Success on the COVID there's a quote from Carol Dweck who says that Walter Mischel is one of the greatest psychologists of our time. Fifty years ago, Walter and his colleagues at Stanford went into the preschool nursery school on campus and tested kids 1960s and they gave them the choice, you can have one marshmallow now or you can have two marshmallows if you can wait 20 minutes. The researcher was in the room with them, told them this left for 20 minutes. They watched them through a one way mirror and saw what the kids did. And what was fascinating is some of the kids rang a little bell and ate the marshmallow immediately, while others waited 20 minutes and got it. He called them one low delay and high delay. But then what was fascinating was when they looked forward 10 years or so, guess 12 years or so, and they looked at their SAT scores, they saw that whether or not they delayed their gratification and waited for the two marshmallows or went for the one predicted their SAT scores. Obviously those who were able to delay as a four or five year old preschooler got a higher SAT score than those who couldn't delay. And then they went to when they were 27 years old to 32 years old. And their high or low delay abilities at 4 or 5 predicted their body mass index at 30 and it predicted brain scans at like 50 or something related to addiction and obesity, all from a simple test testing the ability to delay gratification, which is where the subtitle comes from, why Self Control Is the Engine of Success. Self control is the master aptitude. Willpower is the master aptitude. It's the greatest predictor of whether we're going to get the things we want to see in our lives from happiness and flourishing and other signs of success or not. Now what's exciting is, is that there's a very complex interplay between the, the genetics and disposition and the environment and choices that we all make. And what was fascinating was that Walter could tweak the experiment just a little bit and teach these kids who could only last a minute, a few little techniques to change their perspective a little bit and they could suddenly wait 20 minutes. So whether you have high or low self control right now, you need to know that you can build it. Awesome. And that's what this book is all about. Unpacking the Research over the last 50 years that's gone into self control and how we can apply it to our lives today. Philosopher's note. Bunch of big ideas. That's a long introduction, but there you go. That's the basic marshmallow test. Five big ideas we're going to look at now. The first one is hot versus cool. So one of the primary themes underlying this book is the fact that we have two ways of thinking, right? Hot versus cool. Hot thinking is impulsive. It's driven by the limbic system. And cool thinking is rational. It's driven by the prefrontal cortex. Now, those of us who get in, well, all of us have both, obviously. But the kids who immediately ate the marshmallow had a very hot limbic system. They saw in very concrete terms how tasty that marshmallow would be, and they couldn't resist it, right? Whereas some of them were able to cool that hot impulse by focusing on other things, distracting themselves, pushing the marshmallow away, not staring at it, and reminding themselves of the fact they can get two marshmallows. And he tells the stories of what these kids would do, right, and other techniques that they developed such that allowed them to teach individuals how to cool their hot systems. So that's a big theme throughout the book. Another theme is we want to have self control. The opposite of self control is stimulus control. I love this distinction. Stimulus control. Something happens, boom. I do whatever that stimulus forces me to do. And self control. We are autonomous. We can choose how we want to respond, which will become important as our discussion goes on, and particularly in the fifth big idea. We'll come back to that in a moment. That's hot versus cool. It's like Daniel Kahneman's ideas. Thinking fast, thinking slow. We'll be featuring that soon as well. The second big idea is you plus the future, you plus a stranger. So get this. He talks about research where people are brought into a lab, they're put into an FMRI machine. Just as they're getting settled in, the researcher says, okay, think about yourself. Think about yourself, and you think about yourself, and a part of your brain lights up that they call the self pattern, right? Boom. Okay? Boom. It's a recognizable, familiar pattern called the self pattern. Then they say, okay, great. Now think about a stranger, and you think about a stranger, and a different part of your brain lights up in a similar area, but a different pattern emerges that they call the stranger pattern. Self pattern, stranger pattern. Then they say, okay, great. Now think about yourself in 10 years. Think about yourself in 10 years. And what's fascinating is some people, when they think about their future self, 10 years, elicit a pattern that looks like the self pattern. Other people, when they think of themselves in 10 years, elicit a stranger pattern. It's as if they're imagining someone other than themselves, a stranger. Isn't that amazing? And what Mischel talks about is if you view your future self as kind of a stranger, you're not that connected to your future self. Well, guess what? You're going to be driven by your hot thinking. You're going to be impulsive. You're going to be doing things that have immediate gains rather than cooling off once in a while or a lot of the time, and doing things that will benefit your future self. If you see your future self as an extension of you and the pattern lights up consistent with that, you're more likely to delay gratification than people who see their future self as a stranger. It's a fascinating thing. So he has this little set of circles. This is your current self. This is your future self. Current future, right. And you look at it and say, well, how do you connect to yourself? Is it more like that where your current self and your future self are very separate? Right. I'm drawing circles on the board for those podcast listeners. You can watch the video to see more. And are the circles separate where your current and future self are very separate and distinct, or are they kind of merged where your current self and your future self are actually pretty connected, or are they really connected where you have a deep connection between your current version and your future self? This correlates to your ability to delay gratification because you won't do things that are going to harm your future self because it's very similar to your current self. Really powerful idea in the note. We talk about some of the practices we can do, but we want to engage in connecting our future self to our current self. Might talk about that a little bit more, but we'll move on for now. Third big idea is willpower. So Mischel presents some really fascinating perspectives on willpower research. Now, a common understanding, which Mischel presents as a potential misunderstanding, is that willpower is finite. I've talked about this in these episodes that willpower is finite. Some research shows that, that you have a certain amount of willpower, but it's finite. Mischel suggests that there were conditions in those experiments that may have led to a different factor causing willpower depletion. Subjects might just not have been motivated enough to maintain their willpower after exerting A little bit of effort. So he talks about research where people like Carol Dweck, for example, out of Stanford, did some cool stuff where whether or not an individual thinks that willpower, that using willpower and doing something strenuous will deplete or energize them, basically determines whether doing strenuous work depletes or energizes them. If your story is I have a finite amount of energy and and I'm using it while I'm getting tired, well, then that's what you're going to experience. But if your story is doing hard work and strenuous work energizes me, doing the things that I commit to doing energizes me. It doesn't deplete me. Her research shows that's precisely what happens, which is fascinating. And I've been playing with this today and actually deliberately telling myself as I go through my day, I'm getting energized. This is energizing me. Now. Before, I had kind of an implicit story of there's only so much work I can do in a day and I want to make sure I oscillate. And obviously recovery is so important. Making waves is important. But I tested this idea of what if I just told myself that I've got endless amounts of energy and reminded myself of that, that I was getting energized as I did my work throughout the day. And I've just been crushing it. It's been nuts. Today may in fact wind up being my most productive day ever. I won't go into the details of it, but it's been a good day so far and it's fun to play the game. And I'm excited to experiment some more. So check in and see what your thought process is as you engage in things that challenge you. If you're telling yourself it's going to deplete yourself, research shows likely that is going to be the case. But what if you told yourself you're being energized and building energy as you go? Experiment, test it. Fourth big idea. If then. We've been talking a lot about implementation intentions in recent episodes. The procrastination equation, rethinking positive thinking, solving the procrastination puzzle. In all of those we talked about. If then planning in toward the end of the book, Mischel walks us through the very practical ways we can build our self control. And this is the number one practice. If, then thinking. So what you want to do is you want to identify your hotspots. What are the things that get you A little out of control that you respond to impulsively. Some things that you may not be too proud of. Now obviously we all have different aspects of our lives we want to optimize. But think of the one thing that you do that's impulsive that you'd most like to change. What is that? What's that hot spot in your life? Alright, you got it. It's worth thinking about. Think about that and then think, okay, so the next time this happens, when I feel that hot spot triggered, if that situation arises, then I'm going to do this. There's a cat, there's an antidote to that hotspot. What are you going to do to cool that impulse? You already know what you could do. What could you do when this arises? If this arises, then what will you do? Think about that. That's implementation intentions. If this happens, then I'm going to do that. And Mischel says it's astonishing how powerful this can be. Absolutely astonishing. It may sound simple and overly simple, but it's nuts how powerful it can be. And he says, look, think about it and rehearse it. Think about it in your mind again and again and again. If this happens, then I'm going to do this. If this happens, then I'm going to do this. See yourself doing it. This stimulus comes up and you exert self control. You're not stimulus controlled, you're self control. If then. And he says anything you want to master, you need to practice, practice, practice, practice some more. So give it a shot. If then could be life changing. I'm having fun practicing that as well as I've come back to it so many times in the last couple of months. Fifth big idea is choice. So when we talk about hot and cool, we talk about impulsive versus rational, immediate gratification versus delayed gratification. Mischel makes the very important point that it's not either or, right? If all you do is delay gratification, that can be as bad as only immediately gratifying yourself. What we want is choice. We want to integrate both the hot and the cool, the immediate and the delayed. But we want to have choice about it, right? If we can't develop self control and we stay locked in stimulus control, we don't have a choice. We're being driven by our impulse. So what we want to do is cultivate self control such that we can consciously decide, you know what, now is the time I'm going to eat that marshmallow. I'm not worried about two, I want to enjoy this one. Right now. In other times we may say, you know what, I'm going to wait on this. I realize I could do this, which would be very nice, but I'm going to spare that indulgence. I'm going to invest in something longer term. We want to have the choice, the autonomy, the ability to consciously decide what we're going to do when we want to do it. And that requires self control. Again, the master aptitude. It's a quick look at how to build it. If then know your hotspots, imagine what you're going to do when you're triggered, and then practice it. Willpower. Wow. Is it finite or is it the ability to expand it potentially in virtually infinite, he says with a shift in mindset. It's amazing what we can do as we cultivate that. You plus the future, you plus a stranger. Remember, we want to connect to our future selves. And by doing that we make it more likely that we're going to delay gratification such that we're being nice to the future version of ourselves and setting up a great life for them, rather than completely and immediately gratifying ourselves every moment and making our future self a little bummed. And then finally, hot versus cool, Limbic versus Rational. Limbic versus Prefrontal cortex. Impulsive vis a vis rational. Let's train ourselves to cool the hot impulses when it's appropriate. That's a quick look at the marshmallow test. I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube. So I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to. Get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. 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