Marshmallow Test

Why is this slightly calvin but not quite

sometimes i think about that kid in the experiment
\ who was sat down and told to wait some time
\ before eating the sweetness put in front of him
that his patience would bring a reward
and i think about how they laughed when he didn’t succeed in waiting and instead
\ crammed the entire gummy bear into his mouth the second they left
looking so guilty afterward
the way they gloated and collected data and prognosticated about his future job prospects and potential success-
\ certainly not as good as those who waited, they said
it was something about self-control
i know all too well that when he got home
\ there were probably no sweets
\ or if there were, they were there for a moment only
\ before being snatched away by either cruel hands or circumstance
\ no guarantee that promises meant anything, much less that they were kept.
if it had been me in that chair
\ i’d have eaten it too.

Itt:
People not seeing the marshmallow speak, or bite the kid. Or the horrified look on the kids face.
- Oh my god THAT'S why his face is like that and THAT'S the joke. I really didn't get this comic.
  
  Took me D_C's comment to get it and even then it took me a minute to find the marshmallow and realize it wasn't on the plate anymore 🤦🏻

Turns out the test is only a good predictor of "how well you can trust the adults in your life to keep their words". Which tells more about the envirement than about the kid.

I'd have the one just so I don't have to wait 5 minutes to get out of that weird ass test.
- the study didn't account that many kids assumed the guy was lying

This experiment was not specifically about whether a kid would wait for the second marshmellow or not (which would be delayed by 20+ minutes), nor whether they would play with the roomful of toys, but to see how they grew up. The real test was to catch up with the adults and see how 'successful' they'd become. The experimenters found that those children who waited for the second marshmellow achieved higher grades and had more 'successful' better-paying careers.
It's the concept of delayed rewards vs immediate rewards and is prevalent in the world of machine learning.
- Excerpts from Wikipedia:
  A replication attempt with a sample from a more diverse population, over 10 times larger than the original study, showed only half the effect of the original study. The replication suggested that economic background, rather than willpower, explained the other half.
  Work done in 2018 and 2024 found that the Marshmallow Test "does not reliably predict adult functioning".
  It's great for a confirmation bias, but such a study is way too simplistic to really reach a conclusion. Oh, and:
  The results seemed to indicate that not thinking about a reward enhances the ability to delay gratification, rather than focusing attention on the future reward.

Ain't no marshmallow worth waiting 5 minutes for.

I would give you an upvote now, but I'd rather delay my gratification give you 2 later

The original experiment boils down to being a zip code test anyway
- Well, was it worth learning that about it?
- Double-blind placebo controlled randomized skin color test

I would ask for a grill and stick while waiting. A slightly burnt marshmallow is worth the carcinogen.

Hobbes will avenge him

A shower thought about the original experiment:
It may have only measured how effective "waiting for future gains" was, as a strategy, for each child, in their circumstance.
So the real discovery may be only that the children already had a pretty good idea how promising their own futures were. :(
- Or it measured how rare it was for them to get candy. The most interesting thing about the experiment is honestly the many ways in which it was flawed.
- Or hungrier kids (aka poorer kids) get the marshmallow first. Or those in greater need of serotonin (at least I think it's serotonin) you get from sugar, etc. There's a variety of issues here, but that's true of most "experiments" that aren't actually randomized controlled trial experiments.
- Or they're just natural born addicts like myself and need that instant reward and think to hell with my future self. That's his problem. Present me just got a marshmallow.

Store-bought marshmallows are one of those things where I only really want one.
There's an ice cream shop few towns over that makes fresh, exotic flavored marshmallows, depending on the day they're better than sex. But even those are about the size your fist and honestly two would be a little bit too much.
- You might want to try a different brand of sex tbh. It's gotta have serious issues to get beaten out by some fluffy sugar.
- Tell me where
  
  The Charmery Columbia, MD.
  Haven't been there in a year, you'll prob want to call and make sure they're still doing them. Not all the locations sell it. (At least they didn't)

I don't get it
- "The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a study on delayed gratification in 1970 led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University.[1] In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time."
  The joke is that in this version of the experiment, the child isn't being tested, the marshmallow is. And in this case, the marshmallow has decided to eat this one child instead of waiting until later, when it would have been allowed to eat two children.
  
  Oh shit, I totally didn't see that the marshmallow was biting the kid. The image is so small it looked like a power outlet behind him on the wall
  
  Thanks. I didn't see the marshmallow chewing on the kids arm till I read this then zoomed in. Lol
  
  I always found this study to be lacking...
  5 minutes is not worth 1 marshmallow. Marshmallows are not that good, so one is way enough. As a kid, I could never trust adults who wanted to limit good things. Who's to say the strange adult in a white coat would really bring a 2nd marshmallow? What if they actually remove the marshmallow instead?
  In short, it can only separate kids in two groups: the blind followers of authority and the other ones.
  
  We did this in church with maltesars
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment?wprov=sfla1
  
  I know what the marshmallow test is; I don't get the joke in the comic. It depicts one of the kids who didn't wait. Where's the joke?

Such a silly experiment. You're gonna make them sit and be bored for five minutes with nothing else to do besides thinking about two marshmallows?
- This is a cognitive task aiming to assess whether kids can trade a small reward now for a bigger one later (it tests inhibitory control and ability to project oneself in the future). This experiment was conducted by comparative psychologists and, if I recall well, they also compared the kid's performance to that of some primates to understand the evolution of the human mind.
  
  I get that, I'm just pointing out that depending on how it was conducted it may have been silly. Sort of similar to that test where there's nothing in a room but a button that shocks you and people got bored and shocked themselves. I'm not suggesting the study is invalid, I assume the researchers know better than me, but I could also see something like a kid just sitting at a table with literally nothing to do but salivate about the thought of two treats for a time period. Seems like a better test would be something like letting kids play and then doing this (which could've been what was done. It's just that the comic seems to imply otherwise.)

The best play is to eat the marshmallow immediately so that the experimenter moves onto the next test.

….will there be a new one every 5 minutes?