Don’t Eat The Marshmallow!

A bit of fun for a first post about delayed gratification.  The video is from the excellent TED website.

I have seen several studies like this one which claim to show how young kids, normally four years old, react when presented with a marshmallow and told if they don’t eat it in 15 minutes they will get another one. It’s clearly important that they like marshmallows and there are no other distractions. Those that wait we are told go on to leave successful lives, while those that can’t struggle.

Now I have no idea how these studies have been accredited or peer reviewed, but you should know that as investors we should definitely prefer to wait for two marshmallows – even though it means fighting all sorts of cognitive biases. More on that later.