International collaborative research groups such as Kyoto University, the University of Tokyo, and the University of California, Davis have found that Japanese children who grew up in the habit of saying "I'll have it" and starting eating after everyone got together are more likely than American children. He revealed that he could wait for a long time in front of food.
Putting up with the small rewards that can be obtained immediately and prioritizing the large rewards in the future is called satisfaction delay.Among them, the marshmallow test developed in the United States is known as an issue for examining the delay in satisfaction of children.Give your child one marshmallow and say, "You can eat it right away, but if you wait without eating, you'll get another marshmallow." This is a test to consider whether to eat two marshmallows.
In a preliminary experiment in Japan, the researchers were very surprised to find that many Japanese children were waiting for marshmallows (or other favorite sweets) in the marshmallow test.From here, it is assumed that Japanese children, who have a great deal of experience waiting for others in front of food to chant "I will", have a long waiting time for food-based satisfaction delay tasks. Was verified.
For children aged 4 to 5 years in Japan and the United States, we performed a satisfaction delay task (food condition) with marshmallows as a reward and a satisfaction delay task (gift condition) with a packaged gift as a reward, and compared the waiting time.
As a result, as expected, half of Japanese children waited less than 5 minutes under gift conditions, while nearly 6% waited 15 minutes under food conditions, and the waiting time under food conditions was long. Demonstrated.Children in the United States, on the other hand, waited longer on gift terms than on food.This may reflect a tendency for American children to have more experience waiting to open birthday and Christmas gifts.
From the above, it was suggested that the delay in satisfaction of children is supported not only by individual cognitive ability but also by the "waiting" habit peculiar to culture.In the future, it is hoped that the developmental research on delayed satisfaction, such as how the delayed satisfaction of children will be formed by the environment surrounding the child, will progress.
Paper information:[Psychological Science] Cultures crossing: The power of habit in delaying gratification
