Deferred gratification
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deferred gratification or delayed gratification (as an aspect of emotional intelligence) is the ability of a person to wait for things they want. This trait is arguably critical for life success. Those who lack this trait are said by some to need instant gratification and suffer from poor impulse control.
It has also been said that those with poor impulse control suffer from "weak ego boundaries"; the term comes from Sigmund Freud's theory of personality where the id is the pleasure principle, the superego is the morality or parent principle, and the ego is the reality principle. The ego's job is to satisfy the needs of the id while being conscientious of other people's needs. This is why people who are impulsive are said to have "weak ego boundaries".
[edit] Experiments
The marshmallow experiment is a famous test of this concept discussed by Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist, in his popular work. In the 1960s a group of four-year olds were tested by being given a marshmallow and promised another, if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
[edit] References
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., Peake, P. K. "Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions". Dev. Psychol. 26(6), 978–86, Nov. 1990.
