Last update: 17.09.2024 08:36
Would you rather have a marshmallow now or two later?
In other words: are you prepared to do without something today in order to have more when you retire?
We want to enjoy life to the full here and now and often find it difficult to save for old age.
How can we still manage to eat the marshmallow later?
We want it all.
Now or later?
Actually always, but better now.
We remained like children.
Do you have children?
Then you’ve probably seen this.
And what do we tell our children then?
Probably the same thing we heard from our parents: You have to wait.
Be patient… and save.
Yes, save for later.
Because you can’t always have everything at once.
Saving means doing without something now in order to have more of it later.
So it would be sensible to save.
Consciously foregoing consumption and giving up fun is not always so easy. Control yourself?
We can do this to varying degrees, as the marshmallow test shows.
What the marshmallow test says
The well-known test examines the ability to defer rewards and has been carried out with hundreds of four-year-old children and later also adults.
In its early days, in the 1960s, a team led by psychologist Walter Mischel conducted experiments on reward deferral with a group of preschool children on the Stanford campus.
In individual sessions, a desirable object – marshmallows, hence the name – was placed in front of the children.
Then the experimenter asked: Would you rather have one marshmallow or two?
Okay, you like marshmallows.
I have to do something quickly.
I’ll leave you one marshmallow here.
You can either eat the marshmallow straight away – or you can wait until I come back and then I’ll give you another one. Some children grab it immediately, but the majority can control themselves and wait. Do you feel like one of the children in the video?
In a study conducted 20 years later, this ability to exercise self-control and to “forgo gratification” revealed exciting correlations.
Children with perseverance in the marshmallow test were rated by their parents as more socially competent, more frustration-tolerant and more successful at school.
They also performed better in the study aptitude test.
Mischel came to the conclusion that characters with strong willpower have a better chance of leading a successful and happy life.
What you learn from the marshmallow test for your goals
Numerous replication studies have confirmed that the ability to defer rewards is associated with later success.
And you can now use this knowledge to tackle your retirement planning early and see it through.
You need a “cool head”.
In neuroscientific terms, you need to use your conscious, prefrontal cortex and keep the emotional, limbic system in check.
That’s easy to say and not so easy to do.
But You can achieve your goals with a few tricks.
Trick 1: Control what you think
If you control your attention to the temptations or “think them away”, your stamina will increase.
Mischel’s particularly successful children distracted themselves.
Out of sight out of mind.
They resisted the temptation by doing something else, looking away, covering the marshmallow, singing.
Trick 2: Stay patient
Patient people incur less debt.
They plan more realistically, don’t succumb to the first temptations, they are future-oriented.
And generally happier.
So wait and see, the marshmallow will still taste good later.
Trick 3: Think first, then act
If you turn your approach into a plan, you have already taken the first step.
It helps to build a realistic bridge from today to tomorrow: “I’m looking forward to the future reward, but I know that the road to it, the giving up, won’t always be easy. But I can do it.”
And then set off optimistically: you can do it if you really want to.
Trick 4: Color in the reward
You can visualize the greater reward – your carefree retirement – very concretely and visually and talk down the false reward in the present.
“Yes, I could afford it now, but then I’ll miss it later. Then I won’t be able to enjoy my retirement, travel or live carefree – and that’s what I really want.”
With Smolio, we support you in this and give you a preview of the “reward”.
Smolio shows you what you can look forward to – more later.
What you can do right now… With Smolio, you can see how your pension provision is doing.
And if you’re planning to save more for later, you can simply set up a standing order on your account, for example.
This is a very simple trick to stay on track, limit the temptations of consumption “today” and put money aside for “tomorrow”.
It’s easier that way.
Sources for reading the marshmallow test
W. Mischel, Y. Shoda, M. L. Rodriguez: Delay of gratification in children.
In: Science.
244, 1989, S. 933-938.
W. Mischel: The Marshmallow Test: Willpower, Reward Deferral and the Development of Personality, Siedler Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-641-11927-0.
Angela L. Duckworth, Eli Tsukayama, Teri A. Kirby : Is It Really Self-Control?
Examining the Predictive Power of the Delay of Gratification Task.
In: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Volume: 39 issue: 7, pages: 843-855.
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