Daum: Save the nation — buy now

Remember the famous Stanford marshmallow study of 1972? It asked children at a campus nursery school to choose between eating a marshmallow (or a cookie or a pretzel, depending on their preference) right away or waiting while the researcher stepped out of the room for a period of time, at which point they would get two marshmallows. The purpose of the study, which involved more than 600 children, was to determine at what age we begin to develop an understanding of delayed gratification.

Meghan Daum

September 15, 2011