If you are a psychology enthusiast, you have probably heard of the famous marshmallow (棉花糖) test. In this task, kids are given a single treat, such as a marshmallow, and are told that they can eat that marshmallow now, or they can wait a little while, and have two marshmallows instead.
Some kids eat the marshmallow immediately, but most try their best to wait for the experimenter to come back with two marshmallows.
Wait times in the marshmallow test came to be seen as indicators of self-control. But what if the behavior in the marshmallow test has more to do with cultural norms (准则) than self-control? A 2022 study by Yanaoka tested the idea that children may decide how long to wait for rewards based on what they are accustomed to waiting for in their culture. In the United States (with some exceptions), there is no widespread custom of waiting until everyone is served to eat your food. However, in Japan, there is a mealtime custom of waiting until everyone has been served before anyone digs in.
Because of this difference in norms, the researchers assumed that Japanese children would wait longer in the marshmallow test than the American children. This is exactly what they found. The researchers did a clever follow-up experiment. They found one field where children in the U.S. are accustomed to waiting longer than Japanese children are: Opening presents. In the U.S., gifts are usually given on special occasions, such as birthdays and Christmas. On these occasions, children usually have to wait before they can open their presents. In Japan, however, gift-giving happens more often, and children usually open presents immediately.
Given these cultural differences, Yanaoka expected that if they ran the marshmallow test with Japanese and American kids, but they replaced marshmallows with packaged gifts, then American kids would wait longer to open them. Once again, their assumption was correct. When the potential rewards were packaged gifts instead of food, American children waited 15 minutes on average, and Japanese children waited about four minutes on average.
This is a powerful result because it demonstrates the importance of culture and habit in shaping behavior. If a child waits only four minutes before giving up on two marshmallows but then waits almost four times longer to open a gift, can we really say that that child lacks self-control? I don't think so.
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