African Children Beat Germans In The Marshmallow Test

Who has more resources and less amygdala stimulation? Who has more amygdala stimulation as kids, and who would see an amygdala with more development from it?

For more than four decades the marshmallow test has been used to measure an individuals self-control and ability to delay gratification—a personality trait that is likely to yield positive results from the gym to the office.

For the first time, a group of researchers have carried out the study beyond the Western world. The study, published last month, involved 201 four-year-olds, 76 Cameroonians and 125 German, nearly equal numbers of boys and girls. The German children were chosen from middle-class families while the Cameroonian children were all of the Nso ethnic group and lived in rural settings in northwest of the central African country.

The test works by leaving a child in a room with a marshmallow or similar sweet for 10 minutes. Psychologist Bettina Lamm and her team bargain with the toddlers, if they wait 10 minutes, they’ll get two, if they are unable to resist, then they’ll only get one.

In the culturally specific test, researchers tempted Cameroonian children with a puff-puff, a kind of small doughnut, while the German children could choose between a lollipop and a chocolate bar. Nearly 70% of the Cameroonian children were able to resist the treat. One of them walked out the room to end the wait—without actually going for the puff-puff. In comparison, 49.6% of German children ate or tasted the sweet before the researcher returned, while 22.4% of them walked out…

Much of this had to do with parenting. The study extended to early childhood development to monitor how the children were raised differently. Monitoring mothers and their nine-month-old infants, researchers found that Cameroonian mothers tended to be more authoritarian, socializing their children to fit into the existing family structure while German mothers showed a more observant style and encouraged the pursuit of personal interests.

The childhood displays of self-control have found to be significant right into adulthood. In the original study, researchers tracked the participants (pdf) of the original study through later life and found that as teenagers, the toddlers who waited longer scored higher in their SATs, had better planning skills and responded well to stress compared to those with weaker willpower. As adults in their 40s they continued to display greater self-control.

I’d love to see attitudes toward promiscuity vs monogamy, child-rearing, in-group loyalty, and individualist-competitive vs collectivist attitudes at adulthood. And I’d love to see it compare the Africans who stay put, vs the migrants, and how they behave at childhood.

There are two forms of amygdala, based on the two stages of activation. The first phase of activation is the initial shock. Its nature is the same for everyone, but the degree to which it affects people is not. It is purely emotional and reflexive, and probably similar in operation among everyone, though some may acclimate themselves to it more, and thus feel it less.

Nobody likes pain, but the ability to override it is produced by the second phase of amygdala. That is where the amygdala trains to deliver a second bout of aversive stimulus, which countermands the first, in direct proportion to the long term gain which can be made by ignoring the first shock. This phase of amygdala-triggering is more logical and thought out. It is produced by a logical extrapolation of the future, and what will be lost if you pay too much attention to the first shock.

The two phases of amygdala are coincident with the time-frame perspectives they are related to. Those who are focused on the immediate moment, and ignorant of the future consequences of their actions will be entirely focused on that first amygdala-shock. Those who are focused more on the second amygdala-shock will be those focused more on the future. There may be an insight into how to develop your mind by controlling your focus hidden away in that realization.

Here, the kids who eat the marshmallow immediately have no second wave of amygdala at the thought of losing the later marshmallow. And those focused on the later marshmallow see their second wave amygdala trigger overriding the first.

I love this line – “German mothers showed a more observant style and encouraged the pursuit of personal interests” in raising those children that ate the first marshmallow immediately. Of course that psychology produces mothers who lack second wave amygdala and thus do not care if their children pursue a silly personal interest instead of doing their math homework. That r-psychology feeds off itself from generation to generation through more than just epigenetics.

Think about society today. It is like these German mothers. You want to go $200,000 into debt to get a degree in Womyns Studies? Sure. You want to take government and turn it into a free stuff vending machine, using government debt that we will never be able to pay back? Knock yourself out! You want to get a surgery to reverse your gender and be referred to as “Xie?” Why not?

It used to be the problem was just mothering, and then the kids would enter a society which was relatively K and forward thinking and get fixed. But now, from cradle to grave, society is cultivating this type of short term perspective, and inability to sacrifice for the future.

Is it any wonder the Apocalypse is coming fast, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it?

Spread r/K Theory, because life is amygdala, and amygdala is life