The “Marshmallow Test” does not belong in our churches.

It may seem like a fun and harmless game. Children are given one marshmallow and told that they can eat it if they choose but if they wait they will receive a second marshmallow. The ensuing struggle to delay gratification is amusing to adults and supposed to be instructive to the children.

Where does it come from?

This “game” is called The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. It was first conducted in 1970 by psychologist Walter Mischel and has since become a prominent study in secular psychology.

The secular origins of the Marshmallow Test should be enough to disqualify it from our churches, but there is much more than can, and must, be said against it.

The original studies were intended to gauge when the ability to delay gratification develops in children. It has come to my attention that churches have seized on this experiment and gone beyond its intent as a gauge: they are using it in an instructive way, to teach delayed gratification.

The case against the Marshmallow Test

The case against using the Marshmallow Test to teach delayed gratification is threefold:

1. It subverts the role of parents,
2. It draws its power from brokenness, and
3. It is contrary to the Gospel

Subverting the Role of Parents

The ability to delay gratification is a good and fine thing for a child to learn. In the psychological sense, what drives this ability?

It turns out that subsequent studies have revealed that the home-life of the subjects has the strongest correlation with their successful performance in the Marshmallow Test. Rather than being a habit that is learned and trained by teachers, delayed gratification is a result that occurs from a stable situation at home.

It’s not difficult to imagine why. If I offer you a snack and you don’t know when your next meal will be you will readily devour the snack and ask if there is possibly any more. However, if you know your mom is preparing your favorite meal you might prefer to decline the snack altogether, relying on your trust that bigger and better things await you in the near future.

If I, as a parent, have a great concern and interest for my child’s ability to delay gratification I need to focus on building security and trust at home. To think that children can and should be taught delayed gratification irrespective of their security at home is high-handed folly. It denies the role and importance of the home. It also may train children who are in legitimately insecure situations to forgo meals when they don’t have another one coming.

Drawing Power from Brokenness

The manner in which The Marshmallow test becomes a lesson is also concerning.

The Marshmallow Test is sometimes given to a class as a group, rather than the individual setting of the original studies. In such a case peer pressure alone is going to lead to high rates of successful outcomes. But what if there are hold-outs? What happens when one child is the lone eater of the first marshmallow? Is there a plan for the public embarrassment and shame that would result?

My hope is that there isn’t, and that the situation would be the result of short-sightedness and poor planning. My fear, however, is that there is a plan: that that student would “learn a lesson they will never forget.”

But what of this lesson? Rather than drawing it’s power from the good of a stable home-life, it draws its power from the broken instability that comes from public embarrassment and shame. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we are the adults hoping for such a negative scenario to occur lest valuable lessons go unlearned.

Contrary to the Gospel

What psychologists call delayed gratification often takes on a more familiar term when the Marshmallow Test is used in the church: Self-Control.

We know that Self-Control is a good thing, so what is the harm in teaching it through what seems to be an effective means?

First,

It Confuses the Issue

Are the two marshmallows to represent our rewards in heaven? What then is the first Marshmallow? The earthly pleasures which we are to deny ourselves? In the Marshmallow Test, the second (and greater) reward is of the same nature as the first (marshmallows). If we are to resist the first, and it represents sin, how do we correct the conclusion that the reward is more sinning? How, also, do we deny that the desire which leads one to not sin (eat the first marshmallow) is the desire for more sinning (two marshmallows later)? On the other hand, if the lesson is that the second reward is heaven, how do we teach what the Bible teaches: that the greater reward comes by partaking in what is first offered, which is of the same nature? What we are offered in the Gospel is a gift which must be received if we are to realize the later, greater reward. It is not no-taste now, feasting later. It is foretaste now, feasting later, and fight-laugh-feast in the interim.

The Marshmallow Test confuses this to the point where, second:

You Miss What Really Matters

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22–23

Self-Control is fruit. I wrote earlier about how even psychologists have come to recognize that delayed gratification is the result of a stable home-life. The Christian Self-Control is a fruit of the Spirit. That means it is the result of a change in the student. It is the result of a stable spiritual life.

In the Gospel, we are not merely called to resist the pleasures and temptations of the world, we are called to embrace the world’s scorn and contempt. The faithful Christian is called to go far beyond saying “no” to the world, he must say “no” to himself. We have a legacy of martyrs who have forsaken their very lives for the sake of the Gospel.

“And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24

This is a change that cannot come from misapplying secular psychology. Any attempt to teach self-control without the Spirit would be akin to raising grapes without a vine. Whatever results you get that may appear like self-control are all light without fire. You teach a Christian habit without the Christ who transforms hearts. The result is an artifice of the real thing. It is the difference between sunlight and moonshine. The former is a blaze which gives light to everything. The latter? A dim reflection from a dead world.