In the 1960s, Stanford Professor Walter Mischel started a series of experiments in which he tested hundreds of young children on their ability to delay gratification. A child would go into a room where he or she would be presented with a marshmallow. The researcher then told the child that he would leave and come back later. If the child did not eat the marshmallow and waited for the researcher to come back, he would bring them a second marshmallow. The researcher would leave for 15 minutes (so long!) and study how the kids behaved. The kids acted how you’d expect little kids to act. Some ate them immediately, some agonized over the waiting and gave in, and some waited the full time and were rewarded with a second marshmallow. Then, the researchers followed the children as they grew up and determined that the kids who were able to wait were rated as “more academically and socially competent, verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planful, and able to deal well with frustration and