Could marshmallows measure entrepreneurial potential?

The marshmallow test is currently doing the rounds on Facebook, thanks to social media personality Jay Shetty. The idea behind the test is that those who learn delayed gratification at a young age that you will do better in later life.

But can one simple childhood experiment really measure life success?

In the experiment — which was carried out in the 1970s by Prof Walter Mischel at Stanford University — kids are offered either one marshmallow now, or two later. The kids who wait (and have two marshmallows later) tend to do better in later life.

But the test doesn’t look to see if the children who take the single marshmallow come from poor families.

The life lesson poor kids learn is that the promise of something better later doesn’t always pan out.

Kids from poor families will have learned that there might not be any marshmallows later — so to take one marshmallow now is a sensible decision for them.

Poor kids learn different life lessons from rich kids. The life lesson poor kids learn is that the promise of something better later doesn’t always pan out.

The follow-up studies looked at how well the kids did in later life in areas such as “educational attainment” and “body mass index”. But these measure poverty too.

The original tests were in the US, where higher education is expensive. And obesity has been linked to poverty because of the quality of food poor people have access to.

So eating one marshmallow now, not going onto higher eduction and being overweight could all be about being poor.

The test measures successes that are tied to socioeconomic status. But what about looking at a type of success that isn’t — like entrepreneurial achievements .

The reason this particular angle interests me is because people with ADHD have a different concept of time and can be impulsive.

So kids with ADHD would probably take one marshmallow now because it’s available now — and so be written off by this test at an early age.

But recent research suggests that people with ADHD can also make excellent entrepreneurs — and that this is partly down to impulsivity.

So it would be interesting to see if any of the outliers in the original experiment (for example, those from financially stable backgrounds who chose the one marshmallow) have ended up in entrepreneurial roles.

If the marshmallow experiment tests is a child’s entrepreneurial potential it would mean choosing one marshmallow now is just as valid as waiting for two later.

ADHD and me

But what about me? Well, I would have asked why I couldn’t have two marshmallows now! (My dad loves telling the story of how I negotiated “a couple of biscuits” to mean three.)

If pushed, I’d have taken the one marshmallow now and not bothered waiting.

I have two university degrees, so I’d be an outlier regarding the follow-ups used to measure the original test.

And I’m a self-published author who has worked as a freelancer and contractor in the past, so I fit the ADHD entrepreneurial angle.