[1147] in Humor
HUMOR? The MarshMallow Test
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon Oct 23 09:06:56 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 09:02:19 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Ah, but what if you don't *like* marshmallows? ;)
-Drew
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 14:32:22 -0700
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
From: janos@netcom.com (Janos Gereben)
_________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, October 18, 1995 =85 Page E1
=A91995 San Francisco Chronicle
_________________________________________________________________
The Author Talks About Emotions
Success depends on self-control, he says
PATRICIA HOLT, Chronicle Book Editor
It's 8 o'clock on a balmy Monday morning, and the view from the
Irvine Foundation's 17th floor offices at One Market Plaza is
stupendous. The blue surface of the bay is so still and glassy it
could be a swimming hole of bygone years. But then any notion of
playing hooky to go swimming fails the ``impulse control'' test Daniel
Goleman is discussing at the far end of the conference room.
Goleman, a psychologist and science writer, is author of the surprise
best-seller ``Emotional Intelligence'' (Bantam; 352 pages; $23.95), a
fascinating book about new discoveries in brain research that prove
that emotional stability is more important than IQ in determining an
individual's success in life.
One of the highlights of the book that Goleman explains to this
audience of foundation leaders, educators and grants donors is a test
administered 30 years ago that Goleman calls ``The Marshmallow
Challenge.''
In this experiment, 4-year-old children were individually called into
a room at Stanford University during the 1960s; there a kindly man
gave a marshmallow to each of them and said they could eat the
marshmallow right now, or wait for him to come back from an errand, at
which point they would get two marshmallows.
Goleman gets everyone chuckling as he describes watching a film of the
preschoolers while they waited for the nice man to come back. Some of
them covered their eyes or rested their heads on their arms so they
wouldn't have to look at the marshmallow, or played games or sang to
keep their thoughts off the single marshmallow and wait for the
promised double prize. Others -- about a third of the group -- simply
watched the man leave and ate the marshmallow within seconds.
What is startling about this test, submits Goleman, is its diagnostic
power: A dozen years later the same children were tracked down as
adolescents and tested again, and ``the emotional and social
difference between the grab-the-marshmallow preschoolers and their
gratification- delaying peers was dramatic,'' Goleman says.
The ones who had resisted the marshmallow were clearly more socially
competent than the others. ``They were less likely to go to pieces,
freeze or regress under stress, or become rattled and disorganized
when pressured; they embraced challenges and pursued them instead of
giving up even in the face of difficulties; they were self-reliant and
confident, trustworthy and dependable.''
The third or so who grabbed the marshmallow were ``more likely to be
seen as shying away from social contacts, to be stubborn and
indecisive, to be easily upset by frustrations, to think of themselves
as unworthy, to become immobilized by stress, to be mistrustful or
prone to jealousy, to overreact with a sharp temper,'' and so forth.
And all because of a lone marshmallow? In fact, Goleman explains, it's
all because of a lone neuron only recently discovered that bypasses
the neocortex, where rational decisions are made, and goes straight to
the amygdala, or emotional center of the brain, where quicker, more
primitive ``fight or flight'' responses occur -- and, tellingly, are
stored for future use. The more that emotional memories involving
temper, frustration, anxiety, depression, impulse and fear pile up in
early adolescence, the more the amygdala can ``hijack the rest of the
brain,'' Goleman says, ``by flooding it with strong and inappropriate
emotions, causing us to wonder later, `Why did I overreact?' ''
But if the emotions stored are those of restraint, self-awareness,
self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, hope and optimism, we
become endowed with an ``emotional intelligence'' that serves rather
than enslaves us for the rest of our lives.
The bad news, says Goleman, is that a widely acclaimed and disturbing
study out of the University of Vermont has shown a ``decline in
emotional aptitude among children across the board.'' Rich or poor,
East Coast or West Coast, inner city or suburb, children today are
more vulnerable than ever to anger, depression, anxiety -- what
Goleman calls a massive ``emotional malaise.'' The result is that
``boys who can't control their emotions later commit violent crime;
girls who can't control emotion don't get violent, they get
pregnant.''
The good news, however, involves another recent discovery -- that the
amygdala takes a long time to mature, around 15 or 16 years, which
means to Goleman that ``emotional intelligence can be taught, not only
in the home but perhaps more importantly, in school.'' He points to
two key programs in the Bay Area that are ``miraculous'' -- the Nueva
Learning Center in Hillsborough, where classes such as ``Self
Science'' show children how to identify, name and monitor emotions --
``your own and those that erupt in relationships''; and the Child
Development Project in Oakland, where lessons in ``emotional
literacy'' are ``woven into the fabric of existing school life.''
Goleman's own story is as intriguing as his book. The author or
co-author of nearly a dozen other books involving brain research and
behavior, Goleman experienced steady but modest sales until
``Emotional Intelligence'' hit the stores a few weeks ago and -- bam
-- the cover of Time (and soon of Forbes), ``Oprah Winfrey'' and
``20/20,'' huge sales and almost instant appearance on the top of
best-seller lists throughout the country.
``The attention is unbelievable,'' he says. ``Of course we can all
learn something about our own emotions, but Oprah focused on one key
point when she said the book shows `you're smarter than you've been
told all your life.' She is someone who is obviously emotionally
intelligent and successful because of it, and she wasn't the smartest
person in class.
``But I think the book also points out the real strength in what has
been a feminine preserve in this culture. Girls are raised to be
emotionally astute and perceptive, but sons learn little about
emotions except how to control anger. Women are absolutely more
empathic than men on average, but they've felt powerless to bring up
the idea of emotions as a serious topic.''
The irony, Goleman muses, is that if he had written a book about women
and emotion, school reform, emotion-based leadership in business or
child psychology, ``the book wouldn't have gotten much attention. As
it happens this is a book about all those things, but women and
children and school reform are marginalized in this society. So I come
along with a lot of scientific data that says, `Hey, this stuff is
consequential'; and maybe some doors are opening in our society.''
