If you are involved in raising children or, having passed that stage, grandchildren, or if neither, I am sure you will still have experienced and heard a young child ‘going off’ on a full blown bottom-up-hot-system led temper tantrum. Some might describe the child as “wilful”.
Some kids faced with a “no” or “not now” will make life hell for their minder whether this is a parent or surrogate. Perhaps this is because we expect young children and even adolescents to be impulsive until they learn the value of self-control.
However the outcome of failing to learn self-control at an early age can have far reaching implications.
In the 1970’s Walter Mischel, then a psychology professor at Standford, was interested in how some children were better able to make the choice between having something right now, what he called instant gratification, and being able to delay this for the sake of something better later.
What was it that the ‘delayed-gratifiers’ did differently to those who were unable to delay their impulsive behaviour. How does self-control work sometimes and not others? We have all had the experience of breaking a promise we had made to ourselves when later faced with temptation.
In a series of studies, which at the time were labelled ‘The Marshmallow Experiment’, children from the ages of 4 to 6 years old were unobtrusively observed in a room on their own with no distractions other than a table on which was placed their pre-chosen treat, and a chair.
The instructions they were given as they were left with their treat, for example a single marshmallow or cookie, were that they could either eat it then or on the other hand, if they waited for the adult/teacher to return later (usually about 15 minutes), they would then be rewarded with a second treat.
Roughly a third of children were able to delay long enough to get their second treat. How did they do this? Mischel, in his recent book: The marshmallow Test, describes how most of them created all sorts of ways to distract themselves in order to cool down the bottom-up impulsive drive ‘to-eat-now-to-hell-with-later’.
Some turned their gaze away from the treat or covered their eyes or pushed it further away; some talked or sang quietly or out loud to themselves, reiterating the choice they had been given or about unrelated topics; others made funny faces, picked their noses, created games with their hands and feet and some even closed their eyes or attempted to sleep.
Later, after further experiments including older age groups, he was able to determine how the seemingly intuitive strategies demonstrated by some children could be enhanced or augmented to help others learn how to override the temptation for instant gratification.
As it turned out what was even more important was the difference this childhood ability to override temptation made over the next 30 years compared to the group of children who were observed to be impulsive.
12 years later the children in the long delay group were rated by parents and teachers as having more self-control in frustrating situations, to be more intelligent, self-reliant and confident and trusting in their own judgement. Their exam grades were also higher.
By the time they became adults their educational achievements were higher, they were more able to pursue long term goals, more resilient and adaptive and had better interpersonal skills; they had significantly lower BMIs as an indicator of a healthy diet and were less likely to have used ‘risky’ drugs.
When Mischel’s cohort reached their 40s there were significant differences in their brain activity recorded on functional MRI scans. The long delayers had a more active Prefrontal Cortex where their top-down executive function is situated. This is the area responsible for problem solving, creative thinking and controlling impulsive behaviour. In short, Mischel says, their brains had “better brakes!”
In contrast the short delayers had more active areas in the ventral striatum of the basal ganglia, an area more active during desire, pleasure and addiction. In short a bottom-up “stronger engine”
This doesn’t mean that every child of 4 years of age who ‘fails’ the marshmallow test is destined to be socially and financially insecure in later life and be at higher risk of developing poor health or substance abuse.
Some children develop skills slower than others and many school programs and good parenting integrate the need to teach children the value of, and strategies for, self-control.
Indeed even an instant gratifying child of 4 years of age can be taught to wait for 20 minutes by using the techniques described below to change his/her thoughts about the tempting treat.
By the age of 12, albeit using more age-appropriate rewards, ‘cool thoughts’ can increase the delay to 25 minutes
So what strategies will help us to resist temptation? How can we strengthen and then flex our willpower ‘muscle’ to delay or ignore an impulsive desire to give in to temptation?
Michel emphasizes it is not the strength of the appeal of the stimulus or reward which is important as much as how we think about it. If we change the way we think about the temptation, e.g. palatable food, alcohol, nicotine, texting etc., this also changes how we feel about it.
It is no surprise that the important brain circuits for learning how to apply ‘the brakes’ are located in the Prefrontal Cortex.
The idea is to shift from the bottom-up ‘hot system’ brain circuits, which are often emotionally driven and trigger the impulse reaction, to the top-down ‘cool system’ located in the PFC.
How?
- Distraction: successful delayers create all sorts of ways to distract themselves. This could involve physical or mental activities or both; to some extent it doesn’t matter as long as this activity is engaging enough to keep you focused on this and not the temptation. Recalling ‘happy thoughts’, if you like reminiscing, is also effective. Conversely we are less likely to delay gratification if we feel bad or sad.
- Abstraction: pictures of the stimulus (temptation) are not as tempting as the real thing. If faced with the real thing imagine the object as a picture surrounded by a solid frame.
- Avoidance: avoid visual or other sensory contact with the reward (e.g. smell of food or cigarette smoke). By 6 years of age many children chose to obscure the reward to increase their delay time.
- Plan this in advance: use the If-Then approach.
So if a child can learn how to delay instant gratification in order to strengthen their will power muscle, anyone of any age can find ways to make it easier to resist temptation. It may seem like child’s play but in terms of habit change it is much more important than that.
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