Wednesday 16 September 2009

temptation

i remember learning about this in uni - social psychology.
" ... beginning in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Mischel pioneered work illuminating the ability to delay gratification and to exert self-control in the face of strong situational pressures and emotionally 'hot' temptations. His studies with preschoolers in the late 1960s, often referred to as 'the marshmallow experiment', examined the processes and mental mechanisms that enable a young child to forego immediate gratification and to wait instead for a larger desired but delayed reward. Continuing research with these original participants has examined how preschool delay of gratification ability links to development over the life course, and may predict a variety of important outcomes (e.g., SAT scores, social and cognitive competence, educational attainment, and drug use), and can have significant protective effects against a variety of potential vulnerabilities. This work also opened a route to research on temporal discounting in decision-making, and most importantly into the mental mechanisms that enable cognitive and emotional self-control, thereby helping to demystify the concept of willpower (Mischel et al., 1989; Mischel & Ayduk, 2004)" - wikipedia
i guess the red head is pretty much screwed ... ha!

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