Morning all,
I imagine most of you have seen the Haribo advert where they ask children to resist a StarMix for a little while in order to get an extra one.
The advert is based on something called the Marshmallow Test and it's actually quite serious. I've written a lengthy blog post about it but here's a snippet.
"The experiment was carried out in the late 1960s by a psychologist called Walter Mischel and took place at the Bing Nursery on the Stanford campus. The experiment involved more than 600 children, with each sat in an empty room and asked to choose either an Oreo biscuit, a marshmallow or a pretzel. Most, I believe, picked the marshmallow.
"The room was plain and bare, so there was little distraction. The children were told by a researcher that they could eat the marshmallow, but if they waited for 15 minutes they would be given a second one as a reward and could eat both.
"The researcher then left the room, telling the child that should he wish to eat the marshmallow, he simply had to ring the bell; the researcher would then return and the marshmallow could be eaten."
Full post here
The results showed that the children who couldn't wait the 15 minutes to get another marshmallow had some troubles in later life. Higher BMIs than others, lower exam scores and difficulty maintaining friendships.
I just wanted to know if any of you had heard of this and what you thought about it?