The marshmallow study

I never liked this experiment, but then... Also, 7 other things worth your time.

We had some friends over Saturday night—ordered pizza, drank some wine (the grownups), toasted marshmallows (the kids).

This led, as it often does, to someone making a joke about the marshmallow experiment.

You know this one, I’m sure. It came out of Stanford University in the early 1960s. Researchers sat kids down and offered them a sweet treat, but then said that if they could sit there staring at it for a few minutes first, they'd get two treats.

The idea was to study the concept of delayed gratification. 

But years later, experiment creator and psychologist Walter Mischel claimed that the children’s reactions could predict their future success in life—things like whether they'd grow up to do well in school, score high on the SAT, make more money, and even if they’d avoid obesity or drug addiction.

Now, I've always had issues with this study, which became one of the most famous and most debated in history.

At the outset, I don't like marshmallows, so I imagined that kids like me wouldn…