The Marshmallow Test

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Psychology of long term decision making is a subfield of behavioral economics. The marshmallow test has been used to study willpower and how it's related to our ability to imagine the future. Recent attempts to replicate the marshmallow study correlations with later life outcomes has found that it's hugely contaminated by things like SES, socioeconomic status.

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that haven’t yet happened. This simple ability underlies our capability to organize socially and make contracts with other people. Today’s guest, psychologist Adam Bulley, argues that it’s the primary feature that makes us recognizably human, as he argues in the new book The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight (with Thomas Suddendorf and Jonathan Redshaw).

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Adam Bulley received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Queensland. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

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