Most of us have heard of the famous Stanford experiment held in the 1960s and 1970s in which children were given one marshmallow and told that they would receive another if they didn't eat it for about 15 minutes.
The genius of the study was its follow-up decades later on the subjects. The children who had mastered their desires enough to postpone the pleasure they would receive from eating the one marshmallow without delay in order to get another later ended up being more successful than those who wolfed down the treat immediately. The message was clear: self control and the ability to delay gratification are abilities that help people do well in life. Unfortunately, western culture has not taken these results to heart.
Just a few weeks ago, a massive scandal broke regarding the Volkswagen auto company. In order to improve gas mileage statistics for its cars, Volkswagen installed so-called "defeat devices" that detect when fuel economy tests are being conducted and switch the car into a more efficient mode. Rather than focusing on research and development to actually improve its cars' efficiency, Volkswagen got the jump on its competitors by lying to regulators and millions of customers. This company, the largest automobile producer in the world, chose instant gratification over long-term welfare. Their plunging stocks show the wisdom of that decision.
Our own political leaders have made similar decisions, especially with regard to wars in the Middle East. President Obama won election on a platform promising to get our soldiers out of the region, turning an existential conflict against forces that threaten to destabilize the Middle East and the world into political leverage. Getting out of wars is popular. But abandoning countries that have not developed sufficient military or political capability to defend themselves against radical Islamists has proved disastrous. When ISIS overran huge swathes of northern Iraq last year, I'm sure Obama was second-guessing his choice to pull troops out.
It's not just corporations and governments who have bought the lie of instant gratification, however. The embrace of instant gratification in Western culture has thoroughly pervaded our society.
The epidemic of academic dishonesty in our schools is indicative of how we have applied instant gratification to education. Getting good grades is as important as ever, but students’ ability to defer gratification and get in consistent study has apparently declined, judging by the high rates of cheating in our institutions. A Rutgers University pollster found “in a survey of 24,000 students at 70 high schools … that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework.”
Instead of pursuing long-term romantic relationships, many young people have embraced sex in the forms of hookup culture and pornography, which have negative physical and mental effects respectively for people who engage in these behaviors.
It is intriguing how humans, acting primarily out of self-interest, so often end up making choices not in our best interests. But what can we do about a phenomenon so deeply entrenched in our culture?
Corporations can be forced through regulations to make good long-term choices. Democratically elected governments like ours can be held accountable to the people for their mistakes. But individuals have to learn to self-regulate in order to maximize their well-being, success and fulfillment in life.
It may be painful to ignore the delicious-looking marshmallow of instant gratification in front of us, but if we can only learn to be patient, the rewards on so many levels will be worth the struggle.