Delayed Gratification and Addiction
The idea of delayed gratification has never been foreign to me. When I was much younger, my parents always taught me to stay calm, resist the urge for little gains, and work for the much bigger paybacks. However, it wasn’t until my second year of college, in one of my psychology classes, that I realized my parents’ teaching was in fact “a thing” in modern psychology. And yes, this is what psychologists call “deferred gratification,” or more commonly, “delayed gratification.”
Wikipedia defines the term delayed gratification as,
“The ability to resist the temptation for a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later.”
To put it into perspective, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Walter Mischel, a psychology professor at Stanford University, and his colleagues conducted a now well-acknowledged study — the Stanford marshmallow experiment. In this study, the experimenter gave the child a small treat, such as a marshmallow, an Oreo, or a piece of candy. The child could choose to eat the treat, but if they waited for fifteen minutes, they would receive an additional treat. The original purpose of the study was to understand when delayed gratification develops in children. Nevertheless, after noticing the significant difference of the ability to practice delayed gratification among ethnic groups, as well as the strong influence of family dynamics, Mischel went on and conducted a series of follow up studies to examine the correlations between delayed gratification practice and later life achievement. To his surprise, children who were able to delay gratification longer in preschool were significantly more competent 10 years later. They scored higher in SAT, had better educational attainment, lower body mass index. In other words, they had better life outcomes.
How could the ability to resist a small marshmallow have such a tremendous effect on a person’s life? Psychologists have many theories. But after all, it’s all about self-control; it’s all about enduring sacrifices now in order to obtain benefits later. I mean, think about it — Why would you skip that house party and study for your MCAT? How could a dieter stay away from donuts and eat kale all day? How would someone take a painful surgery? It’s because you know a killer MCAT score could get you some medical school interview invitations, which a house party may or may not. It’s because that dieter knows the momentary pleasure from eating a fat and carb charged donut is not worth the damage it does to their body. And the surgery? Of course the recovery could be painful, but it is also necessary for the physical well-being.
What fascinates me the most is the strong connection of an everyday concept such as delayed gratification to addiction. Five decades after Mischel’s marshmallow experiment, the original participants took part in a brain imaging study. The results showed substantial differences between those with high and low delay times in two brain regions — the prefrontal cortex and the ventral straitum. If you have been following up with my latest posts, you would know that these two regions are related to the mesocortical and mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways, or more explicitly, the impulse control/decision-making and reward pathways. Individuals that are substance dependent usually have abnormalities in these two pathways. And the lack of ability to practice delayed gratification is indeed a characteristic seen in an overwhelming majority of drug addicts.
Does that mean the vulnerability to addiction is predetermined? Is it possible to train ourselves and be better at delaying gratification? Unfortunately, science hasn’t been able to give us certain answers to these questions. But I do hope our expanding knowledge about the brain could help the millions of people who suffer from addiction in the foreseeable future.
