The happiness hypothesis book by Haidt is a very informative and interesting book. I highly recommend it.

 

While reading it this morning, I was intrigued by one study mentioned in the book. The study is an experiment on a bunch of 4-year-olds and basically runs as the following. The experimenter shows one candy (marshmellow?) on the table to the kid and tells him/her that he can have the candy immediately if he wants. But if he's willing to wait, the experimenter can leave the room and get another candy for him, but this might take a while. While the experimenter is away from the room, the kid can ring a bell (also on the table) and then eat the candy if he cannot wait. But in this case, the kid can no longer have the second candy.

 

Not surprisingly, most kids ask for the 2nd candy. And not surprisinly, many kids cannot resist the temptation of the candy on the table and rang the bell before the experimenter returns (which i think i about 20 minutes long).  But what's interesting is that the experimenter revisit the kids 20 years later and linked their results in this experiment with other measures of their performance in life. It is found out that kids who can wait longer for the candy (who better resists the temptation) also have better test scores (SAT), attend better colleges, and have better outcomes in many other dimensions. When kids who can wait longer are asked how they can resist the temptation, the most standard answer is that they try to distract their attention away from the candy by thinking about some other interesting things.

 

I find this study really fasinating. And my lesson from this is 1) being able to resist temptation/delay gratification is a good trait; 2) one effective way to resist one (readily available) temptation is to think of something else that is interesting, exciting, but not readily available.