Being able to wait for a second marshmallow does not necessarily show that a person has questionable values, but learning to delay gratification can make a chronically immature person into a dangerous one.
It's okay to want something. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't, and you learn to recognize that you are still okay if you don't get what you want–and sometimes you look back at that thing you wanted so badly and wonder what you were thinking.
It's okay to work hard to achieve something: learning a skill, getting a college degree, raising children, growing food. But these things need to also offer intrinsic pleasure in the doing and/or learning: it is not always true that a future reward is worth living through hell. And the future job one can get on the strength of a Ph.D., for instance, is likely to disappoint if you aren't doing it out of internal motivation but to gain money, status, or power, to name a few. If you were miserable teaching as a grad student, for example, you'll likely be miserable teaching as a professor.
The thing about holding out for that second marshmallow is that it ostensibly shows you to be someone who will work hard and achieve things. But is that necessarily the wonderful personality trait that it is billed as?
Think about it this way: Cassie receives her marshmallow and is told that if she waits to eat it until the experimenter gets back from some chore, he will give her a second marshmallow. The value offered for patience is a few extra calories and a second sweet to eat.
Patience can be cultivated for its own sake. Cassie could wait, distracting herself, trying to keep herself from eating her treat just yet. Or she could decide that one marshmallow in the tummy is worth forgoing a hypothetical marshmallow in the future. Neither choice affects her inner virtue.
The truth is, some children will wait for another marshmallow and some won't.
The children who eat the solitary marshmallow without trying to wait for the second one do so for a variety of different reasons. Some aren't particularly motivated by the idea of another marshmallow (not everyone loves sweets); some believe that any food they are given must be eaten promptly or it will be taken away; some have reason to distrust the experimenter's promise; some already know they can't wait, so they don't try; some don't interpret the experimenter's directions as a key to an action that would please the researcher, etc. They may or may not be satisfied with their single marshmallow, but they've essentially accepted that one marshmallow is what they are going to get so they learn to deal with it.
Some will wait for the second marshmallow because they've already mastered patience and they hear the experimenter asking them to be patient, so they are (in which case the marshmallow isn't the deciding factor–pleasing the adult is); some will wait because they want to have another marshmallow to share with a sibling or a friend (here, the child's motivation is strengthening his relationship with a sibling or friend); and some will wait for other reasons that I haven't thought of.
But some children will hold out for that second marshmallow because they believe that whatever they have now is not good enough and that if they can only wait a little bit and do whatever horrible tasks are required of them, they will get everything they've ever wanted and will finally achieve happiness. I don't think of this as hope exactly. It's more of a certainty that whatever they have now is not good enough, and that the future is the key to a superior existence. Holding out for a superior experience is usually doomed to disappointment: the child will either fail to get the marshmallow and end up disillusioned and disgruntled, or they will get the marshmallow, but it somehow doesn't measure up to all of their expectations: it is gone in a flash; it isn't what they expected– for whatever reason it just isn't satisfactory. So they go chasing after the next thing they want. These children end up chronically dissatisfied.
So what is wrong with chronic dissatisfaction, you might ask. After all, these people often achieve a lot in life. They are often considered "successful"; they go further in school, they have degrees, they win accolades, and have money, spouses, children, social standing, political acclaim; they make discoveries, found institutions, build monuments, etc.
The problem is that all of these metrics of "success" miss the mark: they measure economics, social status, and achievements, but do not recognize the one metric that is the difference between a life well lived and a life of chronic dissatisfaction. When we do things because we intrinsically enjoy learning, building, socializing, and we truly love our spouse, our children, our friends and our colleagues, we can be content and industrious. But when we do it because we think that we deserve more than those around us, or that what we have isn't good enough, we end up holding on to what we have and grabbing more and more, even when it makes us more miserable. Accepting that this is what we have and being okay with it is an important part of maturing. It is required for finding a measure of inner peace. That maturity can be achieved whether people seek a second marshmallow or not. Chronically dissatisfied people miss out on that aspect of maturity.
The other problem is that when people are chronically dissatisfied it can make them bitter and vengeful. Because they never feel they have enough to be okay, they resent other people's contentment and happiness. They believe that other people don't deserve to be content, industrious and satisfied with their lives if they aren't, or that more content people are bragging or hostile or out to get them– because that's what they feel towards people who are not happy when they are feeling vindicated or triumphant. They believe it's a competition and will often go out of their way to hurt people who seem happy. There's an assumption that there's a limited supply of happiness and that they should always have the lion's share.
In sum, "succeeding" for the wrong reasons is often emotionally the same as not succeeding at all.
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