Delayed Gratification: Best Thing Since Massage Guns? Maybe.
A closer look at recent developments. Includes strategies & protocols!
In the 1960s, the Marshmallow studies commenced1. In them, Walter Mischel and colleagues sought to understand the determining factors of a successful life. The endearing part of the experiment? The participants. Cute 5 year-olds were seated in front of a marshmallow and told by the researcher that either they can eat 1 now or they can have 2 later when he comes back. The researcher then left and watched the kids squirm in front of the marshmallow through a mirror window2. Years later, the kids who resisted the temptation the longest were found to be more successful later in life; they were fitter, better socially adapted, handled stress well, had higher SAT scores, and sported lower levels of substance abuse3.
So, it seems that delaying gratification is the best thing since the invention of massage guns. But where is the poop? I’ve come up with 3.
The Role of other People
The first pile of poop: whenever we delay gratification, we're making a bet there is something better down the road. In an ideal world, that'd be the case. But in the real world, the benefits might never come. Case in point.
The year was 2013 and the new cohort of evil scientists have set out to torture kids with tantalizing marshmallows yet again4. But this time, there was a twist. For one group of kids, the researchers made promises that they didn’t keep. Kids were promised crayons that never materialized or stickers that never saw the light of day. For the other, the researchers were saintly figures of virtue: every promise was kept. Guess how that affected the ability to delay gratification. Right, the kids who had unreliable experiences inhaled the marshmallow at the first opportunity.
Besides unreliable experiences, there’s also the social norm that plays a role in whether children - and probably adults - delay gratification or not. In another study, Japanese children valued delaying gratification more if they believed it to be the group norm5.
The Role of the Environment
So, if we have stellar role models and a reliable environment, we delay gratification and get all the associated goodies. But is that really the case for many of us?
Take the day-to-day experience: how much delayed gratification do we really experience in your environment? Not much, I’d say. In fact, it’s quite the opposite - we’re drowning in a cesspit of instant gratification:
1 click shopping;
frictionless loans to buy whatever you want and worry about paying it later;
fast food joints on every corner;
the algorithmic perfection of social media that gives you just the right dose of dopamine at the right time6;
online porn;
same day delivery;
short-form content (Twitter);
meaningless badges and achievements that are dissociated from real skills or knowledge.
And so on.
So, the second pile of poop is the environment that is geared toward instant, rather than delayed, gratification.
The Role of Nature
Intelligence has been implicated in outcomes ranging from educational attainment through job performance to income7 8 9 10. This already gives you a hint that there’s some overlap with delayed gratification. In psychology, the constructs (such as intelligence or delayed gratification) are never clear cut: there’s often some correlation between them. Now, this needn’t be a problem: if we plug them both into a model as predictor variables of, say, life success, both should contribute unique variance. Is that the case, though?
In a replication study, the connection between important life outcomes and delay time (how long the kids waited) disappeared (and were in general much smaller) when intelligence and socioeconomic factors were added to the model11.
So, the third pile of poop pertains to the fact that the Marshmallow Studies didn’t measure a distinct and independent construct as was assumed.
Are We All Doomed? Not really.
To sum up, the ability to delay gratification is dependent on 3 major factors:
people around us and our experiences with them;
the environment we live in;
genetic disposition, especially general cognitive ability.
Unless I'm totally misinterpreting the results, this points to a kind of pessimistic conclusion: the amount of success in life is largely dependent on variables we can't control (or if so, only slightly).
Here’s where we make a bit of a U-turn and turn this downer of an article into something more hopeful.
An interesting line of self-control research points to the fact that the Michael Jordans of gratification delay usually report very little effort in doing so12 13. Instead of overcoming their temptations, it seems they don’t even have them: they pass the donut aisle completely unfazed or they don’t pass by it at all, as we’ll see. What gives?
Well, it seems that the success isn’t so magical. They either:
create a habit out of delaying gratification or;
modify their micro-environment such that resisting temptation is largely irrelevant or;
some combination of both.
Now obviously there may still be something that led them to do so - innate intelligence, good social norms in their environment, whatever. But the important thing we can derive from these findings is this: the success that comes from delaying gratification is mediated through things you can actually apply regardless of your background.
Self-Control Freaks Rejoice
So in the final section, we’ll look into how you can do just that under the lens of the process model of self-control14. Here’s how it looks:
In this model, delaying gratification begins with situation selection (bottom right). Let's say you have trouble controlling your dieting. The model suggests the easiest thing to do is to simply avoid putting yourself in situations that would jeopardize your efforts: don't go to the sweets aisle in the supermarket. Easy. But what if you already bought something and it's at home?
Well, the next thing would be to modify the situation. This could mean tucking the desired food someplace where you can't see or access it easily, like the back of the fridge or on the top of the shelf that you can't access without a chair. But let's say you're truly dedicated and you find yourself balancing on the wobbly kitchen chair already.
When that happens, you could shift attention to something else. Would you look at all the dust, caked with sticky oil from cooking, that covers the shelf? You can't leave it like that now can you? You’d better get the cleaning utensils and get scrubbing!
Anyway, if shaming yourself to do chores instead of gorging on sweets didn't work, you still aren't completely screwed. According to the model, you can still tell yourself how unhealthy and unnecessary the snack is - you reappraise the situation, and downplay the benefits of the snack somehow (would you look at all that sugar content, crazy! and there’s palm oil in it too. Not something that I - a thoughtful and self-reflected person - would eat, no no).
And if that weren't enough, the last resort is grabbing the non-dominant hand by your dominant hand, and forcefully removing it from the glistening goodness of the snack.
The model also assumes that the further you are in the cycle, the more difficult it is to delay gratification; each step builds up the temptation and makes it more likely you fail in your efforts to resist eating the snack. So, it's quite easy to remove yourself from the situation, but stopping your hand from reaching the snack is extra-hard.
By now, you can intuitively grasp the usefulness of the model in delaying gratification. I hope.
But what are some specific strategies, nestled in the components of the model, that can help you delay gratification?
Attention and cognition
Long term costs, attentional vigilance
The problem with delayed gratification is is that it is, well, delayed. As organisms that are focused on immediate benefits, we generally don't like waiting. The benefits of having or doing something now - watching Netflix or grabbing a donut - are right in front of us. Doing an assignment that's due in a week ahead of time? Well, I could do that, but do I have to? Not really.
What are the long-term costs of that decision, though? For one, you're putting more stress on your future self. What's more, you’ll likely develop habits of postponing things till the last moment, and your life will become a string of continuous deadlines that are always due. Not worth it.
While reminding yourself of the long-term costs of your decisions might help in delaying gratification, and there is some evidence that it is so15, I don't like the solution. It requires self-reflection and volition: you need to be aware of the costs of choosing to watch Netflix over working on your assignment. You also need to act on that awareness. That’s difficult.
Temptation bundling
You can do a bit better with temptation bundling16, where you're aiming to put together something you have to do and something you get to do. It could be listening to music while you work out; watching a series while you cook a healthy meal; or enjoying an audiobook at the dentist's waiting room. In brain terms, the dopamine release you get from doing something you enjoy could, over time, spill over to the "have to" activity as well, as a sort of Pavlovian association. But that is also the downside: If you continue bundling stuff together, your baseline for what you deem enjoyable is bumped up. This is why you sometimes don't feel like working out when you forget your headphones, or can't enjoy a meal without watching something on the side. What you can do is make the bundling variable17: listen to your favorite music while working out, but only sometimes. That way, you shouldn’t inflate your dopamine baseline, and still get the benefits of temptation bundling.
Situational strategies
Implementation intentions
The gist of an implementation intentions (IIs) is simple: it’s an if -then rule that specifies a cue and an action that follows it. For example, you can setup a rule that you'll do 5 push ups every time you leave the toilet:
When I leave the toilet, then I will drop down immediately and do 5 clean push ups.
It sounds a bit silly, I can relate, but bear with me. If you look at the research, you'll notice that the results are quite robust (as opposed to, say, ego depletion18): a meta-analysis with 8k participants and 94 independent studies has shown the effect size of Cohen’s d = 0.65 as compared to the intention only19.
But again: are there any occasions where IIs struggle? Yes. It seems that multiple goals20 and difficult goals21 are hard to manage through implementation intentions. In the former, I can imagine that if you have too many implementation intentions set up, it might be difficult to keep track of them, and it might also make you feel like an automaton: having if-then rules for everything kind of sucks the spontaneity out of life. With the latter - difficult goals - the issue might be that difficult goals are more complex, and thus have more cues bound to them that have to be performed in a sequence.
Overall, I'd say that implementation intention work well as a way to commit yourself to a certain (manageable and singular) goal and stick to it long-term.
Commitment devices
The problem with IIs, as I see it, is twofold:
they are purely cognitive: some wiggle room will always be there (forgetting, rationalizing, etc.);
there aren't any immediate consequences of not implementing the intention. If you get out of the toilet and don't do your 5 push-ups, nothing much will happen.
This is where commitment devices come in: you commit yourself to a certain thing (say eat veggies with every lunch), and set consequences for when you didn't adhere to your commitment. Commitment devices require a) a clear, quantifiable goal, b) consequences of not fulfilling it and c) means of monitoring whether the rule is fulfilled or not. How might this look in practice?
Take the service called beeminder. In it, you:
set up a goal (say, lose 5 kg in 2 months and keep it there for 6 months);
establish the terms (pay x dollars if you don’t);
hook up a smart scale that monitors your weight and reports whether the goal is achieved automatically.
Beeminder measures your progress toward the goal. If you miss a deadline, there’s some slack. But if you fall off the wagon, the money in the escrow goes bye-bye22.
If you’ve tried to commit yourself through IIs in the past but it hasn’t worked yet, maybe a service like beeminder is a tool you can consider to up the ante.
Microenvironments
It won't come as a big surprise when I state that people are affected by their immediate surroundings. If you walk past a cinnamon bun stand, you'll have a thought or two about getting some, even if you're full. If I teleport you to a gym, supermarket, or a library, you'll likely look around, shrug, and start working out, shopping for groceries, or study. Environment matters for behaviors. The question is: how can you encourage delayed gratification through changes in the physical environment?
One of the principles that govern environment design is convenience and accessibility23. Hence, if you want to do more of something, make it convenient and easy to do (and vice versa for the negative behaviors).
How would I tackle a behavior change through modifying my immediate surroundings, you aks? Good question. I like you.
I'd identify the triggers and either make them more or less prominent, depending on whether I want to do more or less of the behavior.
For example, if you want to make it more likely you escape the event horizon of the couch and go to the gym, it pays to prep your gym bag in advance and put it somewhere where you can see it24. If you want to practice guitar more, put it in the middle of your living room. If you want to snack less, you can employ the strategy the Marshmallow kids used: out of sight out of mind. The kids put hands over their eyes so that they can’t see the marshmallow (clever beasties), but you can, you know, place the snacks somewhere out of sight.
Defaults & rules
There are many peculiarities when it comes to human behavior, but there are constants. For example, we prefer inaction over action, something that the literature has dubbed the status quo bias. As a result, we often stick with the default option in many situations25.
Often, this is helpful: it saves us the entire process of decision-making if we can simply rely on what's recommended in a given situation. If I don't care what I have for lunch, defaulting to the sustainable option, for example, is the easiest course of action. But our preference for inaction over action can also be detrimental. Think about all the times you wanted to change something - say, the internet provider - but didn't because it involved a bit of a hassle. In these situations, we're likely sticking with what we have, unless the other option is magnitudes better.
But how is this relevant in delayed gratification situations? Well, you can set rules for what you'll eat and what you won't. You can set rules to have workout days, and have another set of rules set in place in case you don't (keyphrase: commitment devices).
In short, you can set beneficial defaults - perhaps combined with changes in your microenvironment and reinforced through commitment strategies - for the long-term behaviors without immediate payoff.
Summing up
Every time I write a piece about a single construct, especially one that spans so many outcomes such as delayed gratification, I have a feeling that it's the root of everything. Maybe you feel the same. So to make it clear: the ability to delay gratification is probably one of several factors that contribute to general well-being and success in life. So, if you feel like delaying gratification is something you're not interested in and have never been, that's okay.
That said, it seems that delayed gratification seems to play a role in how your life turns out, just not as we've initially expected: the role of the environment is much bigger, and the conceptual clarity we've taken for granted is conflated with general intelligence. Also, there seems to be a considerable influence on the personality side: the ability to delay gratification might have something to do with stable personality traits.
On the flipside, research has identified a plenty of strategies that people with these traits use to achieve their long-term goals. Which means you can use them - probably with some efficiency loss - in your life. You can remind yourself of the long-term costs of preferring short-term satisfaction; bundle the desirable long- and short-term behaviors together; commit via implementation intentions or commitment devices; alter your microenvironment to make certain behaviors more convenient or accessible; and, finally, introduce default rules into your life.
Most of the situations in our life are a far cry from the initial Marshmallow experiments: they are complex beyond comprehension, and have vague and even conflicting outcomes. Still, on average, this short foray into self-control literature indicates that it pays to develop the ability to delay gratification, and prefer the long- over the short-term goals, provided the environment is supportive: you'll be happier, wealthier, and healthier. The strategies are there. The rest is up to you!
If that’s not where the phrase “evil scientist originates, I don’t know where.
try uninstalling and reinstalling tinder - I bet the first person you'll see after you come back is several standard deviations away from the average
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2006.09.004 (gwern.net)
Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction - Huberman Lab (He starts talking about the importance of intermittent scheduling at 01:07:50)
in the most masochistic scenario, you can set them to do go institutions you don’t approve of