The Marsh Mellow Test - The Delay of Gratification Task

The need to feel that you are not on someone's leash is one of the corps motivational needs. I'm king of the marsh mellow test was invented by walter michel, a psychologist who wanted to see how self controlled kids were. In these experiments, he wanted to randomly sign kids to do one of these strategies or not. And what walter did was something very subtle and very important. What he said to these children is, if you want to, when you wants to, you can think of these marshmellows like fluffy, white clouds. So i think that was a way of preserving that autonomy while also essentially issuing an order.