The rewards of a little self-denial in Lent are extraordinary
A Stanford academic, Walter Mischel devised the ground-breaking 'marshmallow test’. It was a very simple test. They put a young child alone in a room with a marshmallow. The child was given a choice; they could eat the marshmallow straight-away, or wait 15 minutes and be given a second marshmallow in reward for waiting. They were filmed and those kids who succeeded in waiting were given a second marshmallow.
In the decades that followed, they kept tabs on the kids. In 2013, Walter Mischel was interviewed by Charlie Rose on his findings, notably that the kids who resisted eating the marshmallow got better marks in school, were less likely to take drugs and predictably were less likely to be obese.
Now that we are entering the season of Lent, many of us are a little bit like the kids in the experiment, willing ourselves to ‘give up’ something sweet and pleasurable for a set time.
If we’re giving up chocolate, paying for our groceries in shops that place keyboard sized bars of Cadbury…
In the decades that followed, they kept tabs on the kids. In 2013, Walter Mischel was interviewed by Charlie Rose on his findings, notably that the kids who resisted eating the marshmallow got better marks in school, were less likely to take drugs and predictably were less likely to be obese.
Now that we are entering the season of Lent, many of us are a little bit like the kids in the experiment, willing ourselves to ‘give up’ something sweet and pleasurable for a set time.
If we’re giving up chocolate, paying for our groceries in shops that place keyboard sized bars of Cadbury…
