Can You Resist the Rainbow?The Skittles Challenge

By: Rachel Bastian & Lindsey Stryk

Instant Gratification

Key Terms:

• Erik Erikson:– Stages in psychosocial

development. – Id vs. Id confusion– Autonomy verse shame

and doubt– Initiative vs. guilt– Will power– Frustration

• Bandura:– Authoritative Model– Development of Self

Control– Self Punishment– Aggression– High Guilt and Low Guilt

“Understanding the transition from the young infant, who had virtually no impulse control and delay ability, to the adult who must have at least some self-control to survive, is one of the greatest challenges for students of human development”

-O. Ayduk and W. Mischel

Erik Erikson• Born in Frankfurt Germany in

1902.• Child of an extramarital union. • Graduated from HS• Became interested in Psychology

at the age of 25yrs.• Married Joan Serson• Left Europe in 1933• In 1960 he began to teach at

Harvard University until his death in 1994.

Erikson’s Life Cycles• Stages 2-5

– 2 (early childhood), strengths: will, crises: autonomy vs. shame, general opposition: compulsion

– 3 (play age), strengths: purpose, crises: initiative vs. guilt, general opposition: inhibition

– 4 (school age), strengths: competence, crises: industry vs. inferiority, general opposition: inertia

– 5 (adolescence), strengths: fidelity, crises: identity vs. identity confusion, general opposition: repudiation

– (Erikson, 32)

Shame & Doubt Will• “To the extent that children resolve this second

crisis(referring to the 2nd stage) in a positive way, with a favorable ratio of autonomy over shame and doubt, they develop the ego strength of rudimentary will, “will”

• Erickson said, is “the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint”.

• Erikson concludes that while the child must learn to control their impulses and deny that which is lacking in worth, ultimately the child is in charge and not the external powers (Crain. P 284).

Erik Erikson, a loyal Freudian

• Not only did Erikson expound upon each general concept in every Freudian Stage, but he also expanded Freud’s Theory of stages so that it included the whole life cycle.

• Freud was initially our main theorists– Studies not did not specifically pertain to our area

of focus

Albert Bandura

Born-1925 in Alberta, Canada• The University of British Columbia

as an undergraduate.• became involved in Psychology

inadvertently• Attended the University Of Iowa

for Graduate School • Became a faculty member of

Stanford University.• Believes that we learn rapidly

through observation.• On the maturist side

The Development of Self Control

• “…most children, even in the absence of reinforcement form external agents, maintain many of the response patterns they have acquired through parental training “ (Bandura, 1963).

• Emphasizes the role of parental modeling and imbedded family morals

• Can be extended to included community/ society norms, religious customs and general background upbringing

Moral Judgment

• “Piaget proposed a two stage theory of moral judgment, one aspect of which concerns consequences versus intentions. That is, younger children tend to judge wrongdoing in terms of its consequences, [while] older children tend to base their judgments on the intentions behind the act” (Crain. P210).

Example:

• “A young child is likely to say that a boy who made a large ink spot trying to help his dad is naughtier than one who made a small ink spot when playing around” (Crain. P210).

• Young child focuses on amount of damage

• Older child focuses on motive

Food for thought…

• “…the cognitive processes that underlie this deceptively simple task [controlled impulse] in childhood are the same ones needed for success in adolescence and adulthood”(Gleitman 2011).

• Possess since birth?– Genetics?

Bandura is Inspired..

• Bandura believed that one could change a child’s way of thinking by different modeling influences.

• So he conducted his own research…

Moral Reasoning• “Bandura tried to show that the children’s thinking could be

altered by modeling influences. In a key part of the experiment, children individually observed an adult model who was praised for giving responses contrary to their own dominant mode.

• If, for example, a child had typically judged wrong doing in terms of intentions, the model always based her judgment on the consequences. An experimenter presented the model with a moral dilemma, praised her when she gave her answer, and gave the child a turn on a new item. Taking turns like this the model and child each responded to 12 new items (different from the pretest items).

The Results:

• This training procedure did have a strong effect. Prior to the training, children gave one type of moral response only about 20% of the time; during the treatment, this number increased to an average of about 50%.

• The experiment also included an immediate posttest in which the children responded once again to the pretest items. The results indicated that the children persisted with their new mode of responding (about 38% to 53% of the time)(Crain. P211).”

Bandura’s Claim..

• Bandura claimed that this study highlights the adult altering influence on Piaget’s specified stages of development (Crain, 211).

Effects on our Project

• In light of Bandura’s belief that a child’s way of thinking could be influenced, or even changed by different modeling influences effected the procedures in our research project.

• We did not make any one action more right or wrong than the other. This way the child would not be influenced by our beliefs.

• We told child:• “You have two options,

neither of them is more right or wrong than the other. You can either eat your skittles now or you can wait (insert #) minutes until we return. At which time if you haven’t touched any of your skittles we will let you keep the skittles in front of you and then some.”

• The Marshmallow test.• Created by Walter

Mischel, a Stanford psychologist (Leslie Ian., 2009).

• First done in the 1960’s.• Tested on 4 year olds.

Dealing with Instant Gratification

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMkn4J_l9uU

• We decided to use skittles over marshmallows since Skittles seem to be more of a universal desire.

• There is more than just one flavor.• We also thought that children would be more apt to

sneak eating skittles, in hopes that we wouldn’t notice. (Little did they know that we counted them out beforehand, muwahaha)

• Skittles smell euphoric. • They are very colorful, and are therefore synthetically

pleasing to the eyes. – This would possibly cause more temptation for younger

children.• The size of skittles is convenient for snacking.

• Younger children, ages 4-7, were more likely to give in to their desires, thus eating the skittles

• We also hypothesized that the younger children, ages 4-7, were more likely to try and sneak a skittle unbeknownst to us

• If a child is significantly involved in sports, spends a considerable amount of time using technology (tv, computer, video games), and is not an avid reader, then she/he will most likely succumb to instant gratification by eating the skittles.

Hypothesis

Survey Questions

• How old are you?• Do you play any sports?– Which sports? How many?

• Do you have a cell phone? Texting?• How often do you watch T.V. and movies?– Rated on Likert scale

• How often do you video/games/ Nintendo ds/ x-box/ computer games/ internet?– Rated on Likert scale

• How often do you read for fun?

Survey Results• Survey intended to investigate possible

connections between variables however, we do not have enough participants to obtain actual quantitative data – Possible further research study

• All the children had limited access to T.V./ movies and other media distractions– Limited to weekends – Supports upbringing theory of Erikson and

parental influence mentioned by Bandura• No significant relation between reading

and experiment results– About half enjoy pleasure and about half do

not enjoy pleasure reading

Experimental ResultsGender Age Skittles

Male 13 Waited

Female 13 Waited

Male 8 Waited

Male 4 Waited

Male 7 Waited

Male 4 Happily devoured skittles in under 5 minutes

Male 11 Waited

Female 11 Waited

Male 9 Waited

Male 11 Waited

Male 6 Waited

Temptation vs. Resistance

• Angelic 4 year old male- immediately grabbed for the skittles until… we informed him that he would be given more if he waited. Thus, he proceeded to sit back and cross his arms proclaiming “I’m gonna wait ten minutes!”, and holding to his word, he did.

• The other 4 year old male said he would wait as well, only to eat all his skittles in under 5 minutes of waiting.

Female, age 13

• Conspicuously hid one of the skittles to mislead us into thinking that she ate it…sneaky, sneaky.

• Our Hypothesis was partially supported by the 4year old male who ate the skittles.– He was involved in four sports– He didn’t read due to the fact that he didn’t

know how.

Influential Variables“there are marked individual differences in the extent to which persons deny themselves rewards that by others are regarded as

socially permissible” (Bandura, 171)

Inability to Resist

• Frustration• Temptation• Desire• Independence

– children will alternate between slavish compulsiveness and willful impulsivity, the child will act totally independent by altogether identifying with his rebellious impulse (Erikson, 78)

Delayed Gratification• Bandura

– Shame– Fear– Guilt– Self-punitive responses

• Personal standards of achievement to maintain, (Bandura, 170)

– Cultural and religious norms – Parental models

• Erikson– Upbringing– Morals– Accomplishments– Success– Self-Esteem– Confidence

Limitations• Each environment was different.

– We’re pretty sure that one child took a nap.• We came at different times.

– This could effect the level of a child’s hunger. We could have conducted our study after/before a child had

• Since we conducted our research around Halloween, children probably already have their Halloween fix.

• Children were never in a room that was completely bare. • We did not have an even girl to boy ratio from our testing pool. • Tested children from same social environment, all were associated with UD

in some manner. Therefore, this might of led to more well behaved kids. – Refer to Bandura Research on aggressive vs. Withdrawn boys and their fathers.

• Not enough time• Funds• Would have focused more on younger children.• Parent was near by when experiment was conducted.

If Only We Could Do It Over Again…• If we could do this project over again we would use the same environment

to test each children.– Empty, secluded and quiet room with no distractions

• We would expand our testing pool to children of different social end economic backgrounds.

• We would have tested at least one boy and girl from each age group.– More focus placed on younger age groups and between genders– Aggression is more associated with males and aggression and self-control are

significantly negatively correlated as detected in Bandura’s research • We would of given them a greater amount of skittles. • Focus on time in which skittles are eaten

-amount of time spent resisting is significant in determining child’s resistance - “Children who do not deviate, or who deviate only after an extended period of time, are judged

stronger than their resistance to temptation” (Evans, 1978).

• Possibly observe children's actions during the waiting period

Did you resist the rainbow?

Encore!

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQvBrEEYS20&feature=related

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