The Marshmallow Test: Understanding Self-control and How To Master It

by Walter Mischel

To avoid the regret my colleague felt when her trip went from the hypothetical to the reality of packing and heading off to the airport, it might have helped if, before deciding to accept, she had imagined how it would play out as if it were happening now. If you want to decide how something (a new job, an exotic trip) will feel in the future, you might try to imagine yourself doing it in the present.4 Simulate the events as vividly as possible, in great detail, by essentially pre-living them. When my graduate students are fortunate enough to have more than one job offer and are tortured about their decision, I suggest that they imagine, as concretely as they can, living life in each job, one full day at a time, as if the job were happening now. The research by Trope and his colleagues on how psychological distance influences us also speaks to why it is much easier to resist immediate temptations if we think about them in abstract, cool ways or as being far away in space and time. Such