One cookie or Two: Part 3

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Today I will wrap up this mini-series on delay of gratification. What have you learned from parts 1 and 2? Delay of gratification is the ability to forgo an immediate, but less desirable reward, in order to receive a more desirable reward later. This ability is measured in childhood using the classic paradigm developed by Walter Mischel: Kids try to wait for two treats instead of having one immediately. Finally, you learned that performance during the delay task in childhood relates to important developmental outcomes in later life, such as social competence, well-being, drug use, and SAT scores.

I’d like to conclude with some evidence on what helps or hurts a child’s chances of successfully waiting during the task. Remember, how long kids wait in childhood predicts important future functioning. If we want to help kids develop or cultivate delay of gratification ability in early life we can’t just say “wait for two cookies!” We need to give them tangible strategies to work with.

To identify which strategies help, researchers conducted experiments in which they modified tiny parts of the delay task and measured how these modifications impacted the amount of time children could wait. For a great review of these studies check out Mischel, Shoda, and Rodriguez (1989).

What not to do in your relationships: Gottman's "four horsemen of the apocalypse"

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The last time you got into a fight with someone close to you, what emotions did you feel? How did you act? Did you criticize the other person, call them names, or roll your eyes as you sat in stony silence? Did you get defensive when they tried to explain what was wrong? Or maybe you were able to joke around and lighten the mood. Although everyone fights, people differ in how they deal with conflict. And it turns out that how we deal with conflict says a lot about the future of our relationships.

By watching couples fight, researcher John Gottman figured out what not to do if you want to make your relationship last. Last week I started a series of posts examining how to hold onto happiness in your relationships, and this week I want to talk about some of the seminal research in this area that looks at what behaviors to avoid if you want a happy ending. Specifically, Gottman discovered that there are four behaviors that are particularly detrimental to relationships. These behaviors are so detrimental that Gottman termed the “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” So who are these four horsemen?

Reflections on National Pride, Group Cohesion, and the Death of Osama Bin Laden

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"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."  -- biblical proverb 

"(Pride) is the crown of the virtues." -- Aristotle 

Admittedly, this post is a bit outside of our comfort zone as psychology researchers, in that it moves into socio/political issues that we have little expertise in (e.g., we're qualified to talk about individual psychological experiences and not how global political events effect National Security). Nevertheless, the death of Osama Bin Laden is a significant event in the United States, and this blog is as much a utility for its bloggers as it is for its readers: Just like you, we're trying to figure out how all of this fits into our daily lives.

In case you haven't heard, on May 1st, 2011, USA Special Forces ended the life of Osama Bin Laden--a man involved in the planning and execution of the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001--after chasing him for a decade. Clearly, the death of Osama Bin Laden has many social and political implications, for example it highlights the sacrifices that military families make daily for our continued safety, raises questions about the increased safety (or not) of American citizens; closes a long chapter in US military operations; and has important political implications for the 2012 presidential campaign, just to name a few. As psychologists, we're not really qualified to talk about these issues in an informed way. Instead, we'll try to understand how the death of Osama Bin Laden factors into our social identities as Americans, and the emotions we feel in our daily lives. In particular, we will focus on the experience of one emotion: pride.

Friday Fun: When Your Research Goes Rogue

Technically, we were on the cover!

In my very brief academic career it has been fun and gratifying to receive attention from the mainstream media on topics covered in my research. There are a number of benefits to this. For example, my parents--for perhaps the first time-- could actually get a sense of what exactly I do all day, and could even tell their friends about it! In some cases it gave me a chance to connect with interesting people--not directly, but indirectly through my research. For example, some players from the local professional basketball team, the golden state warriors, gave quotes about some of our research in the local newspaper. It also allowed me to live a childhood dream: as a kid I was quite the basketball player--dreaming of one day being written about in Sports Illustrated. Research allowed this to happen (though admitedly it wasn't quite the way I had imagined it as a kid). Still, when the media storm hits, you can't help but feel like your work is taking on a life of its own, and that you have little control over the outcome. Here I'd like to give some fun examples for when... Your Research Goes Rogue!

Science and The Secret: Can beliefs create reality?

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A few years ago a book and film called The Secret took the country by storm, partly thanks to Oprah's glowing endorsement. Its central principle, and that of the 2010 sequel The Power, is the law of attraction, the idea that "like attracts like"- negative thoughts attract negative events, and positive thoughts attract positive events. The Secret takes the power of positive thinking to an extreme. If you want a particular job, it's not enough to just be optimistic about your chances of success - you have to believe that you already have the job and act as if it's already yours. Go buy new work clothes, restructure your schedule around the job, and prepare yourself mentally for your new life.

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Although The Secret purports to be rooted in science, many of its claims are controversial - not only because they reinforce a blame-the-victim mentality, but because they rely heavily on pseudo-science, such as the idea that quantum physics is the operating mechanism behind the law of attraction. 

Still, certain elements of The Secret do have some scientific credibility, though not necessarily the kind the authors had in mind...

One cookie or two: Part 2

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Last week I introduced you to work on delay of gratification – the ability to forgo an immediate, but less desirable reward, in order to obtain a more desirable reward later on. I described the way psychologists assess delay of gratification in childhood – with the famous delay (a.k.a. “marshmallow”) task.

If you didn’t read the prior post, or can’t remember the task, take a look back before reading on. A quick reminder…a child waits A LONG TIME, ALONE, with NOTHING TO DO, in order to receive two treats rather than have just one treat immediately. The amount of time the child can wait serves as the measure of delay of gratification ability.

As I already mentioned, this task seems pretty ridiculous (albeit awesome to watch). Yet, I promised to describe “…all the cool and important outcomes behavior during this task predicts.” I will get to those outcomes today. 

First let me provide a little historical context:
There are few psychology majors, and almost no psychology graduate students or professors who haven’t heard of Walter Mischel. In addition to his groundbreaking work on personality, Mischel created the delay of gratification task that I’ve described. Mischel’s original work on delay of gratification focused on understanding the features of the task that helped or hurt a child’s chances of waiting. For example, can children wait longer when the treats are sitting right in front of them or when they are covered? (What did he find? I’ll get to that in my next post)

In addition to this experimental research, Mischel was curious about whether individual differences in performance on the delay task relates to functioning in later life. Is this task capturing something about a child that is important and long-lasting? To answer this question, Mischel followed a group of participants overtime. These committed participants (and their parents) have completed various follow up assessments between the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (when they first completed the task) through to the present. 

Will the Prince and Princess get their happily ever after? Only research can tell

Last Friday the world watched with excitement and anticipation as Prince William and Kate Middleton became husband and wife. Now we are left reading glowing reviews of Kate’s wedding dress, looking at pictures of the best and worst hats (or is that just me?), and gradually moving on, finding other news to grip our attention. William and Kate must also move past the frenzy that surrounded their wedding and begin adjusting to life as a married couple. Their courtship and wedding have been a Disney fairy tale, but are they ready for what it takes to make a marriage work? What does it take to make a marriage work?

Ted Huston attempted to answer just this question with a thirteen year study of 168 couples. For the first few years of their marriages, the couples in his study answered questions regarding their feelings about their relationship and their partner. Then Huston tracked them down again thirteen years later to find out whether they were married or divorced, and if they were still married, how happy they currently were with their marriage. So what did he find?

What Kurt Lewin Can Teach Us About Our Genes

Do you know this man? (source)

Most people don't know Kurt Lewin, and I think that is a travesty of epic proportions. In the ivory tower of the academy (where most researchers live), he is considered to be the father of modern social psychology. His theories inspired the classic research of the last century, and his principles of social psychology still govern the way researchers design experiments today.