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LINK The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure? - The Atlantic

This makes so much sense! It's nice to have that reminder once in a awhile that even science needs to be questioned. We are always learning new things and what we think we know often is not exactly as it seems.

MsAl 8 June 7
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6 comments

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Poor children do not equate sugar or hair dye with happiness. "Making being poor more bearable" is false as poverty does not negate happiness. Also the study never accounted for a child such as I who did not eat or crave sugar as I was on a restrictive diet all of my childhood & never developed Americas sugar ADDICTION. So I would not have even wanted either marshmallow.

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what if you're satisfied with one marshmallow? and then have no need to wait for more.

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Putting food in front of a starving child vs. one whose belly is full is not "science." Let alone trying to gauge what it means for the kid 20 years down the line. Faulty original premise. But good that someone tested or questioned it.

lerlo Level 8 June 8, 2018

A starving child is rarely offered marshmallows as a source of food.

@Countrywoman meaning the marshmallows were the key to the whole thing right? 🙂

@lerlo Perhaps not the key. But a temptation one must learn to resist or control ones actions regarding the dilema

@Countrywoman guess you missed my point. ANY food, whether it be marshmallows, cereal or meat in front of a starving child, tells you nothing other than they are hungry and they won't resist it.

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Good post. Shared on FB.

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The test is still valid, but forms a different conclusion:

Affluence gives kids a reason to trust the universe to bring them what they want.

Poor kids often don't experience good things coming to them, so tend to react out of fear of loss, instead of making sacrifices for their futures.

Actually the new study found that once you controlled for income there was. o difference in future success of the kids who ate them and those who did not.

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That’s the scientific method... Science is always changing it’s mind... because FACTS!

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