562 Part VI Learning-Cognitive Theories
two broad strategies: redirection of attention or cognitive reframing (Mischel et al.,
2010). Looking away or attending to something besides the tempting object helps
delayers. Reframing a situation away from what Mischel and colleagues call the
“hot” features (the marshmallow’s yumminess, for example) and toward “cooler”
representations (the marshmallow’s shape) also boosts ability to delay.
Nearly all readers have heard of the now-famous marshmallow test, and many
of us have seen YouTube videos of little kids sitting alone at tables in agony, bend-
ing themselves into pretzels to not eat that marshmallow. Sesame Street even fea-
tured the Cookie Monster learning to delay gratification so he can later join the
“Cookie Connoisseurs Club.” Unfortunately, when the popular press gets hold of
research like this, both the details and the fundamentals of the message often get
lost. Many naïve readers have assumed that the longitudinal research findings that
some kids had the “grit” back in the 1960s to delay their gratification, and that grit
later predicted a lifetime of success, meant this trait of self-control was highly
genetic; one either has it or does not have it. But Mischel’s cognitive-affective
personality theory was and remains always about the dynamic interaction of the
cognitive, affective and behavioral actions people make in given situations. As such,
self-control involves skills and these skills can be exercised in some situations and
not others, and they can be taught and enhanced.
Walter Mischel (2014a) recently published a book reviewing his research over
the decades on willpower and self-regulation, and setting the record straight, in a
conversational style, regarding the takeaways from this work entitled The Marshmallow
Test: Mastering Self-Control. In it, he argues that self-control and the ability to delay
gratification is like a
muscle that we can
strengthen by training,
and that we can choose to
flex or not. He and his
colleagues discovered
two important strategies
that enable us to resist
temptation in favor of
long-term goals: redirec-
tion of attention and cog-
nitive reframing (Mischel
et al., 2010). The kids in
the original marshmallow
studies who succeeded in
delaying employed these
strategies, and all of us
can learn to do so. Look-
ing away or attending to
something besides the
tempting object helps
delayers, whether we are
facing a sweet treat like a
marshmallow or a packThe marshmallow test is a classic measure of self-regulation
in children and predicts many long-term outcomes such as
academic performance in high school and college.
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