Every so often there is a study, article or report which feels so correct when we read it we trust it without challening the data. It states a truth we believe in and now we have validation.
Case in point: The marshmallow test at Stanford University. Small kids sit in a room and offered a deal: Here’s a marshmallow. If you eat it now, you get one, but if you wait fifteen minutes and the marshmallow is still here when we come back to you, you get two marshmallows.
It was studying delayed gratifiication and the ability to resist temptation.
They followed up twenty years later, the kids who showed they could wait ended up being happier, wealthier, on a better path forward. The conclusion feels so right. That successful people are those that avoid immediate gratification.
Fast Forward to 2020: New analysis on the data. Variables not explored were. 1. How hungry the kids are. 2. History of kept promises the child has experienced. All very important variables which bring the conclusion into question.
A lesson to us all, question the data and conclusions of everything. Especially those that we want to be true.
Sea's The Day 