Delayed Gratification: Is It About Self-Control or Culture?

If you are a psychology enthusiast, you have probably heard of the famous marshmallow test, developed by the late Walter Mischel. In this task, kids are given a single treat, such as a marshmallow, and are told that they can eat that marshmallow now, or they can wait a little while, and have two marshmallows instead. Some kids eat the marshmallow immediately, but most try their best to wait for the experimenter to come back with two marshmallows. Those kids really seem to be struggling through that delay (you can find adorable videos documenting this on YouTube), and many give up.

The original study found that there was a lot of variability in how long kids waited for the two marshmallows before giving up. When the researchers followed up with those kids later in life, children who waited longer had better life outcomes: more academic success, better social behavior, and even markers of better health. Therefore, wait times in the marshmallow test came to be seen as indicators of self-control. Those children who keep waiting are the ones with the most perseverance and grit, and that’s why they are so successful later.

But what if the behavior in the marshmallow test has more to do with cultural norms than self-control?

A 2022 study by Yanaoka and colleagues tested the idea that children may decide how long to wait for rewards based on what they are accustomed to waiting for in their culture. In the United States (with some exceptions), there is no widespread custom of waiting until everyone is served to eat your food. However, in Japan, there is a mealtime custom of waiting until everyone has been served, and then saying itadakimasu (which literally means, I humbly receive, but is essentially, bon appetit), before anyone digs in.

Because of this difference in norms, the researchers hypothesized that Japanese children would wait longer in the marshmallow test than the American children. This is exactly what they found. Japanese children waited 15 minutes on average, whereas American children waited five minutes on average. This certainly suggests that cultural norms are important.

But this isn’t conclusive evidence; after all, maybe Japanese children actually have better self-control, or maybe they differ from American children in other ways that could explain the result. The researchers did a clever follow-up experiment. They found one domain where children in the U.S. are accustomed to waiting longer than Japanese children are: Unwrapping presents.

In the U.S., gifts are usually given on special occasions, such as birthdays and Christmas. On these occasions, children usually have to wait before they can unwrap their presents. Birthday gifts are often opened at the end of birthday parties, and Christmas gifts are opened after everyone wakes up on Christmas morning. I definitely remember, as a child, looking at my gifts under the Christmas tree longingly, trying to figure out what they were, before my parents allowed me to open them. In Japan, however, gift-giving happens more often, and children usually open presents immediately.

Given these cultural differences, Yanaoka and colleagues expected that if they ran the marshmallow test with Japanese and American kids, but they replaced marshmallows with wrapped gifts, then American kids would wait longer to open them. Once again, their hypothesis was correct. When the potential rewards were wrapped gifts instead of food, American children waited 15 minutes on average, and Japanese children waited about four minutes on average.

This is a powerful result because it demonstrates the importance of culture and habit in shaping behavior. If a child waits only four minutes before giving up on two marshmallows but then waits almost four times longer to unwrap a gift, can we really say that that child lacks self-control? I don’t think so. I think it just means that they are adjusting well to their social milieu.

When Walter Mischel developed the marshmallow test, he never meant for it to be used as some stable, trait-like measure of self-control. He was interested in how circumstances and situational factors could flexibly change children’s desires to delay gratification. Fifty years after his original studies were published, I think we are finally starting to see that Walter’s focus on circumstances was exactly right.