Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability

Abstract

Children are notoriously bad at delaying gratification to achieve later, greater rewards (e.g., Piaget, 1970)-and some are worse at waiting than others. Individual differences in the ability-to-wait have been attributed to self-control, in part because of evidence that long-delayers are more successful in later life (e.g., Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990). Here we provide evidence that, in addition to self-control, children's wait-times are modulated by an implicit, rational decision-making process that considers environmental reliability. We tested children (M=4;6, N=28) using a classic paradigm-the marshmallow task (Mischel, 1974)-in an environment demonstrated to be either unreliable or reliable. Children in the reliable condition waited significantly longer than those in the unreliable condition (p<0.0005), suggesting that children's wait-times reflected reasoned beliefs about whether waiting would ultimately pay off. Thus, wait-times on sustained delay-of-gratification tasks (e.g., the marshmallow task) may not only reflect differences in self-control abilities, but also beliefs about the stability of the world.

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Brief article
Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making
on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs
about environmental reliability
Celeste Kidd
a,
⇑
, Holly Palmeri
a
, Richard N. Aslin
a,b
a
Brain & Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Meliora Hall, Rochester, NY 14627-0268, United States
b
Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Meliora Hall, Rochester, NY 14627-0268, United States
article info
Article history:
Received 3 March 2012
Revised 27 June 2012
Accepted 15 August 2012
Available online 9 October 2012
Keywords:
Child learning
Decision-making
Rational analysis
Delay of gratification
Marshmallow task
abstract
Children are notoriously bad at delaying gratification to achieve later, greater rewards (e.g.,
Piaget, 1970)—and some are worse at waiting than others. Individual differences in the
ability-to-wait have been attributed to self-control, in part because of evidence that
long-delayers are more successful in later life (e.g., Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990). Here
we provide evidence that, in addition to self-control, children’s wait-times are modulated
by an implicit, rational decision-making process that considers environmental reliability.
We tested children (M= 4;6, N= 28) using a classic paradigm—the marshmallow task (Mis-
chel, 1974)—in an environment demonstrated to be either unreliable or reliable. Children in
the reliable condition waited significantly longer than those in the unreliable condition
(p< 0.0005), suggesting that children’s wait-times reflected reasoned beliefs about
whether waiting would ultimately pay off. Thus, wait-times on sustained delay-of-gratifi-
cation tasks (e.g., the marshmallow task) may not only reflect differences in self-control
abilities, but also beliefs about the stability of the world.
Ó2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
When children draw on walls, reject daily baths, or
leave the house wearing no pants and a tutu, caretakers
may reasonably doubt their capacity for rational deci-
sion-making. However, recent evidence suggests that even
very young children possess sophisticated decision-mak-
ing capabilities for reasoning about physical causality
(e.g., Gopnik et al., 2004; Gweon & Schulz, 2011), social
behavior (e.g., Gergely, Bekkering, & Király, 2002), future
events (e.g., Denison & Xu, 2010; Kidd, Piantadosi, & Aslin,
2012; Téglás et al., 2011), concepts and categories (e.g.,
Piantadosi, Tenenbaum, & Goodman, 2012; Xu, Dewar, &
Perfors, 2009), and word meanings (e.g., Xu & Tenenbaum,
2007). Here we demonstrate that young children also use
their rational decision-making abilities in a domain of
behavioral inhibition: a sustained delay-of-gratification
task.
Decision-making is said to be rational if it maximizes
benefit or utility (Anderson, 1991; Anderson & Milson,
1989; Marr, 1982), yet young children’s decisions during
delay-of-gratification tasks often appear to do just the
opposite (e.g., Mischel & Ebbesen, 1970). When asked to
resist the temptation of an immediately available low-
value reward to obtain one of high-value after a temporal
delay, 75% of children failed to do so, succumbing to their
desire after an average of 5.72 min. The cause of these
apparent failures of rationality, however, is not fully
understood. While children’s failures to wait are likely
the result of a combination of many genetic and environ-
mental variables, two potentially important factors are
self-control capacity and established beliefs.
0010-0277/$ - see front matter Ó2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.08.004
⇑
Corresponding author. Address: BCS, Meliora Hall, Box 270268,
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0268, United States. Tel.:
+1 585 275 6281; fax: +1 585 442 9216.
E-mail addresses: ckidd@bcs.rochester.edu (C. Kidd), hpalmeri@bcs.
rochester.edu (H. Palmeri), aslin@cvs.rochester.edu (R.N. Aslin).
Cognition 126 (2013) 109–114
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Cognition
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT

1.1. Deficient capacity hypothesis
One possible explanation for failing to wait for a larger
reward is a deficiency in self-control; some children are
simply incapable of inhibiting their immediate-response
tendency to seek gratification. Young infants, for example,
have not yet developed the executive functions necessary
for inhibitory control (e.g., Piaget, 1970), as evidenced by
the perseveration errors made by up to 2-year-old children
in A-Not-B tasks (e.g., Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999; Piaget,
1954). As predicted by this theory, children’s ability to de-
lay gratification improves with maturation (e.g., Mischel &
Metzner, 1962). Maturational changes, however, are insuf-
ficient to account for all of the variance in task perfor-
mance (e.g., Romer, Duckworth, Sznitzman, & Park,
2010). Individual differences in children’s capacities for
self-control may account for the remaining variance.
Self-control has been implicated as a major causal fac-
tor in a child’s later life successes (or failures). Mischel,
Shoda, and Peake (1988) analyzed data from adolescents
who, many years earlier, had been presented with a labo-
ratory choice-task: eat a single marshmallow immediately,
or resist the temptation during a sustained delay to receive
two marshmallows. With no means of distracting them-
selves from a treat left in view, the majority of children
failed to wait for the maximum delay (15 or 20 min) before
eating the marshmallow, with a mean wait-time of 6 min
and 5 s. Importantly, longer wait-times among children
were correlated with greater self-confidence and better
interpersonal skills, according to parental report. Longer
wait-times also correlated with higher SAT scores (Shoda
et al., 1990), less likelihood of substance abuse (Ayduk
et al., 2000), and many other positive life outcomes (e.g.,
Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). Based on these find-
ings, the marshmallow task was argued to be a powerful
diagnostic tool for predicting personal well-being and la-
ter-life achievement—‘‘an early indicator of an apparently
long-term personal quality’’ (Mischel et al., 1988). The lo-
gic of the claim is that a child who possesses more self-
control can resist fleeting temptations to pursue difficult
goals; in contrast, children with less self-control fail to per-
sist toward these goals and thus achieve less. To be clear,
the evidence for poor self-control in young children (e.g.,
Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994; Goleman, 1995), in
a wide variety of tasks and contexts, is undeniable. At issue
is the origin of failure of delay-of-gratification in laboratory
tests like the marshmallow task, which has remained lar-
gely speculative (Mischel et al., 1989, p. 936).
1.2. Rational decision-making hypothesis
Another possibility is that the variance in children’s
performance may be due to differences in children’s expec-
tations and beliefs (Mahrer, 1956; Mischel, 1961; Mischel
& Staub, 1965). Under this theory, children engage in ra-
tional decision-making about whether to wait for the sec-
ond marshmallow. This implicit process of making rational
decisions is based upon beliefs that the child acquired be-
fore entering the testing room. The basis for this theory
centers on what it means to be rational in the context of
the marshmallow task. Waiting is only the rational choice
if you believe that a second marshmallow is likely to actu-
ally appear after a reasonably short delay—and that the
marshmallow currently in your possession is not at risk
of being taken away. This presumption may not apply
equally to all children. Consider the mindset of a 4-year-
old living in a crowded shelter, surrounded by older chil-
dren with little adult supervision. For a child accustomed
to stolen possessions and broken promises, the only guar-
anteed treats are the ones you have already swallowed. At
the other extreme, consider the mindset of an only-child in
a stable home whose parents reliably promise and deliver
small motivational treats for good behavior. From this
child’s perspective, the rare injustice of a stolen object or
broken promise may be so startlingly unfamiliar that it
prompts an outburst of tears. The critical point of the fore-
going vignette is that rational behavior is inferred by
understanding the goals and expectations of the agent
(Anderson, 1991; Anderson & Milson, 1989; Marr, 1982).
Relevant to this hypothesis is the fact that children with
absent fathers more often prefer immediate, lesser rewards
over delayed, more valuable ones (Mischel, 1961). Also,
children’s willingness to wait is negatively impacted by
uncertainty about the likelihood, value, or temporal avail-
ability of the future reward (Fawcett, McNamara, &
Houston, 2012; Mahrer, 1956; McGuire & Kable, 2012;
Mischel, 1974; Lowenstein, Read, & Baumeister, 2003).
These effects are consistent with the idea that children
may be capable of engaging in a rational process when
deciding whether or not to wait.
In support of this second hypothesis, we present evi-
dence that the reliability of the experimenter in the testing
environment influences children’s wait-times during the
marshmallow task. Half of the children observed evidence
that the researcher was reliable in advance of the marsh-
mallow task, while half observed evidence that she was
unreliable. If children employ a rational process in deciding
whether or not to eat the first marshmallow, we expect
children in the reliable condition to be significantly more
likely to wait than those in the unreliable condition. Our
experiment provides a fundamental test of this perspective
on children’s rational behavior and provides compelling
evidence that young children are indeed capable of delay-
ing gratification in the face of temptation when provided
with evidence that waiting will pay off.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Participants
Twenty-eight caretakers volunteered their children
(ages 3;6 – 5;10) for the study. The children were all
healthy, had not recently visited the lab (within 2 months),
and had not interacted with researchers running the study
since infancy. These precautions ensured children had
minimal prior expectations specific to the lab or research-
er’s reliability before this study. Children were randomly
assigned to one of two experimental conditions—unreliable
and reliable—such that each group was gender and age bal-
anced (nine males, five females, and M= 4;6). Participants
received a small treat bag and $10 as compensation.
110 C. Kidd et al. / Cognition 126 (2013) 109–114

2.2. Procedure
2.2.1. Art project task
Before the marshmallow task, children were first pro-
vided with evidence about the reliability of the researcher
through the completion of a two-part art project involving
a Create-Your-Own-Cup kit (with which children could
decorate a blank paper slip to be inserted into a special
cup). Each of the project’s two parts involved a crucial
choice. In Choice 1, the child could either use well-used
crayons or wait for a new set of art supplies. In Choice 2,
the child could either use one small sticker or wait for a
new set of better stickers. Upon arrival, children were es-
corted to the ‘‘art project room’’ that was not part of the
normal lab space and where parents could covertly observe
them from the main lab space.
For Choice 1, the researcher presented the child with a
small set of well-used crayons in a tightly sealed wide-
mouth jar. The researcher explained that the child could
use the crayons now, or wait until the researcher returned
with a brand-new set of exciting art supplies to use in-
stead. The researcher then placed the tightly sealed crayon
jar in the center of the table and left the child alone in the
room to wait for 2.5 min. Though we wanted children to
ostensibly have a choice, we wanted them to choose to
wait. Thus, the chosen container was intentionally difficult
to open. This manipulation was successful, and all children
waited the full 2.5 min without using the well-used cray-
ons. In the unreliable condition, the researcher returned
without the promised art set and provided the following
explanation: ‘‘I’m sorry, but I made a mistake. We don’t have
any other art supplies after all. But why don’t you just use
these instead?’’ The researcher then helped the child open
the jar of well-used crayons. In the reliable condition, the
researcher returned with a rotating tray featuring a large
assortment of exciting art supplies. (See Appendix A.1 for
full scripted dialog.) In both conditions, the researcher
encouraged the child to draw for 2 min.
For Choice 2, the researcher produced a round 1/4-in.
reward-style sticker from their pocket sealed inside of a
plastic envelope. The researcher explained that they could
use the small sticker now, or wait until the researcher re-
turned with a larger number of better stickers to use in-
stead. The researcher then placed the small sealed sticker
in the center of the table and left the child alone in the
room to wait for 2.5 min. As in Choice 1, the sticker pack-
aging was also difficult-to-open by design: the sticker was
glued down and covertly sealed inside the plastic envelope
with superglue. This preparation was ultimately unneces-
sary, however, as children were so occupied with drawing
during this delay that they did not examine the sticker.
This manipulation was also successful, and all children
waited the full 2.5 min. without using the 1/4-in. reward-
style sticker. In the unreliable condition, the researcher re-
turned without the promised stickers and provided the fol-
lowing explanation: ‘‘I’m sorry, but I made a mistake. We
don’t have any other stickers after all. But why don’t you just
use this one instead?’’ The researcher then offered assis-
tance to the child in opening the sealed sticker package,
and then covertly swapped it out for an identical usable
version. In the reliable condition, the researcher returned
with 5–7 large die-cut stickers featuring a desirable theme
(e.g., Toy Story, Disney Princesses). Unbeknownst to the
child, the caretaker selected that set of stickers to be espe-
cially desirable in advance of the study. In both conditions,
the researcher then encouraged the child to work on their
drawing for 2 min.
Thus, children were provided with two sources of evi-
dence that the experimenter—and more generally the test-
ing situation—was either unreliable or reliable.
2.2.2. Marshmallow task
The marshmallow task immediately followed the two-
part art task. Once the table was cleared, the researcher re-
vealed a single marshmallow to the child and provided the
following explanation:
‘‘You finished just in time, because now it’s snack time!
You have a choice for your snack. You can eat this one
marshmallow right now. Or—if you can wait for me to go
get more marshmallows from the other room—you can
have two marshmallows to eat instead. How does that
sound? [Response.] Okay, I’m going to go get more marsh-
mallows from the other room and turn your picture into a
cup! You should stay right here in that chair. Can you do
that? [Response.] I’ll leave this [marshmallow] here, and
if you haven’t eaten it when I come back, you can have
two marshmallows instead!’’
The researcher placed the marshmallow directly in
front of the child, 4 in. from the table’s edge. The research-
er then quickly collected the art materials and drawing and
exited the room. The child was left alone in the room, while
under covert observation via webcam, until either they
consumed the marshmallow or until 15 min had elapsed.
Regardless of whether they waited, each child was ulti-
mately given three additional marshmallows at the conclu-
sion of the study.
We note that this final portion of the experimental pro-
cedure is slightly different from those used by the studies
analyzed in Shoda et al. (1990). Major features of the delay
situation are identical; however we did not require chil-
dren to explicitly signal their desire to stop waiting before
eating the lesser treat. The original paradigms involved
training children to expect that the experimenter would
return upon use of an explicit signal (e.g., ringing a bell).
Since this would necessarily provide children with addi-
tional information about the experimenter’s reliability (as
well as add time and complication to our already lengthy
experimental procedure), we omitted it. As an additional
benefit, this simplified procedure ensures that even very
young children could quickly and easily understand the
task.
2.2.3. Coding
Two naïve coders (who were unaware of the experi-
mental conditions) reviewed blinded videos of children in
the marshmallow task and recorded when each child’s first
taste—a lick or bite—occurred. Judgments were checked
against one another to ensure reliability: 78.57% matched
exactly, 14.29% differed by 1 s, and 7.14% differed by 2 s.
When judgments differed, the later time was used. Coders
C. Kidd et al. / Cognition 126 (2013) 109–114 111

also quantified excitement by measuring smiling time (s)
and assigning a subjective rating of apparent contented-
ness (on 1–9 scale) at the onset of the waiting period (first
30 s). Additionally, the degree of physical movement (fidg-
etiness) was measured via a computer script that quanti-
fied the mean number of pixel changes across frames
during the same 30-s time interval.
3. Results
Mean wait-times are shown in Fig. 1. Because the task
was terminated at 15 min, children who had not eaten
the marshmallow may have waited longer if the experi-
mental design had permitted. Thus, this analysis is a con-
servative estimate of the true difference between the two
conditions. Children in the unreliable condition waited
without eating the marshmallow for a mean duration of
3 min and 2 s (M= 181.57 s). In contrast, children in the
reliable condition waited 12 min and 2 s (M=722.43 s). A
Wilcoxon rank-sum test (also known as a Mann–Whitney
Wilcoxon or a Mann–Whitney U) confirmed that this differ-
ence was highly significant (W= 22.5, p< 0.0005). Thus,
children in the unreliable condition waited significantly
less than those in the reliable condition.
We also conducted a binary analysis of whether chil-
dren waited the entire 15 min without tasting the marsh-
mallow (Fig. 2). In the unreliable condition, only 1 out of
the 14 children (7.1%) waited the full 15 min; in the reliable
condition, however, 9 out of the 14 children (64.3%)
waited. A two-sample test for equality of proportions with
continuity correction at
a
2-tail
= 0.05 (Newcombe, 1998)
was highly significant (X
2
= 7.62, df =1, p< 0.006). Thus,
children in the unreliable condition were significantly less
likely to wait the full 15 min than those in the reliable
condition.
Additionally, we performed a linear regression with age
and gender as predictors, controlling for condition. Neither
factor—age (b= 8.57, t= 1.29, p> 0.20) nor gender
(b=11.63, t=0.10, p> 0.92)—was significant in our
sample. Detailed subject data appear in Appendix A.2.
Since these results might alternatively be explained by
a difference in mood across the two groups (e.g., by differ-
ently induced levels of either frustration or excitement), an
analysis of the three relevant measures—apparent content-
edness, smiling, and fidgetiness—was conducted (see
Appendix A.3). Results suggested that these variables did
not vary systematically across the two conditions.
Unreliable Reliable
Mean Wait Time (Minutes)
0 5 10 15
***
Fig. 1. Mean wait-times of children in each condition. Error bars show
95% confidence intervals. Children in the unreliable condition waited
without eating the marshmallow for a mean duration of 3 min and 2 s
(M= 181.57 s). In contrast, those in the reliable condition waited 12 min
and 2 s (M= 722.43 s). A Wilcoxon signed-rank test found this difference
to be highly significant (W= 22.5, p< 0.0005). Here, 15 min was used as
the wait-time for children who did not eat the marshmallow until the
researcher returned, though these children may have actually waited
longer if the experimental design had permitted.
Unreliable Reliable
Proportion of Children Who Waited 15 Minutes
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
***
Fig. 2. Proportion of children who waited the full 15 min without eating
the marshmallow by condition. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
In the unreliable condition, only 1 out of the 14 children (7.1%) waited the
full 15 min; in the reliable condition, however, 9 out of the 14 children
(64.3%) waited. We tested the difference using a two-sample test for
equality of proportions with continuity correction at
a
2-tail
= 0.05. The test
found it to be highly significant (X
2
= 7.6222, df =1,p< 0.006).
112 C. Kidd et al. / Cognition 126 (2013) 109–114

4. Discussion
The results of our study indicate that young children’s
performance on sustained delay-of-gratification tasks can
be strongly influenced by rational decision-making pro-
cesses. If self-control capacity differences were the primary
causal mechanism implicated in children’s wait-times,
then information about the reliability of the environment
should not have affected them. If deficiencies in self-con-
trol caused children to eat treats early, then one would ex-
pect such deficiencies to be present in the reliable
condition as well as in the unreliable condition. The effect
we observed is consistent with converging evidence that
young children are sensitive to uncertainty about future
rewards (Fawcett et al., 2012; Mahrer, 1956; McGuire &
Kable, 2012).
The resulting effect of our experimental manipulation
was quite robust (
D
M
delay
= 9 min, p< 0.0005). Importantly,
while there were small procedural differences between our
study and past studies, children—age and gender-matched
to the current study—who faced similar choices without
prior explicit evidence of experimenter reliability waited for
around 6 min (e.g., 6.08 min in Shoda et al. (1990)
1
and
5.71 min in Mischel & Ebbesen (1970)
2
). When we manipu-
lated experimenter reliability, children waited twice that
long in the reliable condition (12.03 min), and half as long
in the unreliable condition (3.02 min). While further work
will be required to explicitly test the relative contributions
of different factors, preliminary comparisons suggest that
the influence of a child’s beliefs about the reliability of the
world is at least comparable to their capacity for self-
control.
3
To be clear, our data do not demonstrate that self-con-
trol is irrelevant in explaining the variance in children’s
wait-times on the original marshmallow task studies. They
do, however, strongly indicate that it is premature to con-
clude that most of the observed variance—and the longitu-
dinal correlation between wait-times and later life
outcomes—is due to differences in individuals’ self-control
capacities. Rather, an unreliable worldview, in addition to
self-control, may be causally related to later life outcomes,
as already suggested by an existing body of evidence (e.g.,
Barnes & Farrell, 1992; Smyke, Dumitrescu, & Zeanah,
2002).
5. Conclusions
We demonstrated that children’s sustained decisions to
wait for a greater reward rather than quickly taking a les-
ser reward are strongly influenced by the reliability of the
environment (in this case, the reliability of the researcher’s
verbal assurances). More broadly, we have shown that
young children’s performance on delay-of-gratification
tasks can be strongly influenced by an implicit rational
decision-making process.
Acknowledgements
The research was supported by the NSF GRFP (to the
first author), and Grants (to the third author) from NIH
(HD-37082) and the J.S. McDonnell Foundation
(220020096). We thank Steven T. Piantadosi, Ed Vul, Betsy
McGovern, Dan Yurovsky, Alyssa Thatcher, Laura Zimmer-
mann, Elizabeth Bonawitz, Chen Yu, Katherine White,
three anonymous reviewers, everyone at Isaiah House (Or-
ange County Catholic Worker), and video coders Eftinka
Prifti, Eric Partridge, Caitlin Lischer, Julia Schmidt, and
Maritza Gomez.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary material associated with this article in-
cludes additional scripted dialogue (A.1), detailed subject
data (A.2), and the analysis of mood variables (A.3). This
material is part of the online version at http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.cognition.2012.08.004.
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