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A child鈥檚 ability to delay gratification is correlated with their perception of an adult鈥檚 trustworthiness.

One marshmallow now, or two later? For children, the decision may partially depend on social trust.

A child鈥檚 perception of an adult鈥檚 trustworthiness can affect his or her willingness to resist a small, immediately available reward in order to obtain a larger reward later, a new 精品SM在线影片 study has discovered.

The findings, which were recently published in the journal听, indicate that preschoolers who observe an adult behaving in an untrustworthy manner give up on waiting for a delayed reward at a rate that is nearly three times that of preschoolers who observe an adult behaving in a trustworthy manner.

The experiment highlights the importance of social trust in a child鈥檚 willingness or unwillingness to delay gratification, an ability that previous studies have linked to better life outcomes such as higher SAT scores and lower rates of obesity.

鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 make sense for kids to delay gratification if they don鈥檛 trust that they鈥檙e actually going to get the reward they鈥檙e expecting in the future,鈥� said听, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU-Boulder and the lead author of the new study. 鈥淲e wanted to explore how trust might contribute to that.鈥�

The researchers recruited 34 children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old with parental consent. The children were randomly assigned to one of two groups in which they observed an adult interact with another person in either a trustworthy or an untrustworthy manner.

In the 鈥渦ntrustworthy鈥� group, the adult in the room lied to the other person in an obvious fashion, allowing the children to witness the dishonest behavior.听 In the 鈥渢rustworthy鈥� group, the adult behaved honestly toward the other person.

Then, children were seated at a table and provided with a single marshmallow.听 The adult told children that they could eat the marshmallow right away if they liked, but if they waited while she went to do something in another room, they could have two marshmallows once she returned.

All children preferred to wait for two marshmallows.听 However, the children who had observed the lying adult waited less time overall, and were far less likely to hold out for the second marshmallow, choosing to eat the first marshmallow before the 15-minute period elapsed.听 By contrast, children who observed the honest behavior waited more time overall and obtained the second marshmallow far more often.

鈥淜ids are very tuned in to truth and honesty,鈥� said Michaelson. 鈥淭hey have an acute sense of fairness and lying. It鈥檚 striking that children simply observing one adult鈥檚 interaction with another can have such strong implications for their trust in that adult going forward.鈥�

The study implies that children who opt for an instant reward over future ones may not always be acting impulsively or irrationally, but rather may do so because they have observed something that makes them distrustful of the person promising the reward.

Future research in this area may examine whether or not promoting greater social trust can increase the ability to delay gratification in certain groups (such as drug addicts) who tend not to be good at doing so.

The study was co-authored by Yuko Munakata, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU-Boulder. The National Institute of Mental Health provided support for the research.

Trent Knoss is a science editor at the听.