Vad handlade det berömda marshmallow-testet om? Jo:

Put a marshmallow in front of a child, tell her that she can have a second one if she can go 15 minutes without eating the first one, and then leave the room. Whether she’s patient enough to double her payout is supposedly indicative of a willpower that will pay dividends down the line, at school and eventually at work. Passing the test is, to many, a promising signal of future success.

Det verkar alltså bra att ha förmåga att skjuta upp en positiv upplevelse och att inte lyda den ögonblickliga impulsen att få en (mindre) positiv upplevelse direkt. Nu visar en ny studie, ”Children Delay Gratification for Cooperative Ends”, att barn som samarbetar (i par med andra) lyckas bättre med att uppvisa tålamod:

In the current study, we … presented pairs of children (N = 207 individuals) with a modified version of the famous marshmallow test, in which children’s outcomes were interdependently linked such that the children were rewarded only if both members of the pair delayed gratification. Children from two highly diverse cultures (Germany and Kenya) performed substantially better than they did on a standard version of the test, suggesting that children are more willing to delay gratification for cooperative than for individual goals.

Detta med att arbeta tillsammans med andra tycker jag själv ger bättre disciplin och bättre resultat, så resultatet förvånar mig inte. Det förefaller dock viktigt, i alla fall i forskningssamarbeten, vem man samarbetar med. Man måste komma bra överens, komplettera varandra och kunna lämna samarbetet om det inte fungerar väl.