Can You Wait for the Second Sweet?
Waiting for the bigger reward - with food, comfort, people, money and goals
The famous experiment with children and a sweet on a plate made delayed gratification sound like a single talent you either have or lack. Adults are more uneven than that. Plenty of people save every month and cannot leave a packet of biscuits alone, or work for years towards a qualification and still blurt out every piece of news the moment they hear it. This test gives you a separate score for five areas of life.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about what you actually do, not about what you would like to do. Most people are strong in some areas and weak in others.
What it measures
The five domains of the Delaying Gratification Inventory: food, physical pleasures and comfort, social interactions, money, and achievement. It is narrower than impulsivity, which also covers acting without thinking and seeking thrills, and different from procrastination, which is about putting off tasks rather than putting off rewards.
Based on: Delaying Gratification Inventory (Hoerger, Quirk & Weed, 2011)
Possible results
Food
Waiting to eat, or eating the better thing later rather than the tempting thing now.
Physical pleasures
Giving up comfort, rest or pleasure now for something better later.
Social interactions
Holding back in the moment with people for the sake of the relationship later.
Money
Saving and waiting to buy rather than spending as soon as you want something.
Achievement
Putting in effort now for goals that pay off much later.
Common questions
Does the marshmallow test really predict success?
Less than its reputation suggests. Mischel's studies found that preschoolers who waited longer became more competent adolescents, but the samples were small and privileged. When Watts, Duncan and Quan repeated the idea with a larger, more diverse group, the link with later achievement was about half as strong and shrank by around two thirds once family background and early abilities were controlled for.
Is delaying gratification the same as willpower?
Only partly. The original research on children found that those who waited longest were not gritting their teeth but distracting themselves or thinking about the reward differently. Adults who do well at waiting mostly arrange their surroundings so that the temptation is not there, and trust that the later reward is real. Strategy and circumstances do much of the work.
Why can I wait with money but not with food?
Because the five domains are related but separate. That is exactly why the inventory was built with five scales: the researchers found that delay in one area only partly predicts delay in another. Food and physical comfort work on your body in the moment, while money and achievement are more abstract, so different people find different ones hard.
Sources
- Hoerger, M., Quirk, S. W., & Weed, N. C. (2011). Development and validation of the Delaying Gratification Inventory. Psychological Assessment. doi:10.1037/a0023286
- Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science. doi:10.1126/science.2658056
- Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the marshmallow test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797618761661
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Delaying Gratification Inventory, so scores are not comparable to published norms. It was validated mostly online with English-speaking adults. A 2018 replication of the childhood sweet test found the link with later achievement half the original size, and far smaller after accounting for family background. This is not a diagnosis; if eating, spending or other habits cause you real distress, talk to a doctor or psychologist.
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