Criticism of Walter Mischel's marshmallow experiment

I have blogged about the famous marshmallow experiment before. Today Po Bronson, coauthor of NurtureShock, criticized the experiment. (I blogged about NurtureShock yesterday.) From Marshmallow Boy vs. The Pokemon Kid – The Neuroscience of Children’s Passions (Newsweek blog):

I was talking about Mischel’s data with Dr. David Shernoff. Shernoff has been working with Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to study children’s motivational states during their school environment. Shernoff felt that Mischel’s data is an indictment of the educational system. The kids who can do well in school are the kids who can do well waiting for marshmallows – they can sit still and wait it out through long periods of disengagement. That’s not the kind of kids we should be cultivating.

Yes, kids are motivated by marshmallows and cookies. But that’s not the kind of motivation we should be focused on. That’s not the kind of motivation that fires up their attention systems and makes them operate at peak levels. Fundamentally, the Mischel paradigm measures and tests kids at a moment engineered so

there is nothing to care about in life but marshmallows and pleasing the experimenter. It tests them, essentially, when they are at the absolute bottom of their operational abilities. It tests them when they are bored – not when they are stimulated.

In that sense, the marshmallow paradigm is a big distraction. Parents shouldn't fixate on how long their kid can resist marshmallows. They should think more about developing their children's true interests, the things that make their hearts sing.

Note (added October 14, 2009): Daniel Goleman on NurtureShock: Daniel Goleman Responds to Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (Newsweek blog).

Comments

[Kare anderson]

Thank you Stephanie for covering this dispute so well (as usual) as I'd read both books, agree with Po yet had not followed this "conversation." Your blog is such a continuing gem of information. I cited it today on Facebook

[StephanieWestAllen]

Thanks for the kind words, Kare! Good to "see" you here.