Legendary Marshmallow Test Yields Lessons for Everyday Challenges in Self-Control
Walter Mischel, the psychologist renowned for the groundbreaking study known as the “marshmallow test,” has finally decided to tell the story of that research for a general audience.
He dedicates the book, aptly titled The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control, to his now-grown daughters, saying they inspired him when they were young to study self-control in preschoolers.
“I saw dramatic changes in my own children,” says Mischel, the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in Columbia’s Psychology Department. “I realized I was quite clueless about what was going on in their heads.”
