LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) -- Back in the 60s, a Stanford University researcher named Walter Mischel, used a large sample of four-year-olds for an interesting study.
He would bring each child in a room, and tell them he was about to leave and they could eat their marshmallow, but if they waited till he got back to eat it, they'd get a second one.
They tracked these kids through school and into adulthood, and the ones who went ahead and ate the marshmallow without waiting, didn't perform as well in school, made less money, and tended to weigh more.
The experiment was a good test of self regulation, and 50 years later we see where the lack of this trait can lead.
Teen pregnancy, bankruptcy, obesity, domestic abuse, and like we pointed out at six, in a THV extra, a generation that acted on impulse and hasn't saved for retirement.
Odd, but a country founded on frugality, now is confronted with a major problem: The lack of self-regulation.
For the past 20 years our culture has focused on building self esteem, when all this time, we should've been instilling the discipline to wait for the second marshmallow.