Patience v. Impatience: And the Winner is?

We’ve learned from experience we can get whatever we want quickly. Life’s not the same as it was in the 20th-century. If we wanted something then, we had to physically go out and buy it or wait a week for it to arrive in the post. Today, we can get what we want within the same day in most cases. It’s hard to have patience — or easy to be impatient — in this type of environment; it’s really an after thought.

We want what we want, and we want it now!

Consider the Stanford “marshmallow experiment,” it was a study on delayed gratification in 1972 led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University. The participants consisted of 50 children (25 boys and 25 girls). They ranged in age from 3 years 6 months to 5 years 6 months. In the study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the room for about 15 minutes and then returned. The reward was either a marshmallow or pretzel stick, depending on the child’s preference.

When the original participants were revisited, scientists discovered those who had been able to put off gratification in favor of a superior reward as 4-year-olds had grown up to be more patient adults. “They also had higher SAT scores, lower body mass indexes, and a…