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Delayed Gratification: What is it?

Aashika Duvoor

September 7, 2020          

 

          I’m sure a lot of us have seen some version of this famous experiment: 

          A researcher gives a child between the ages of 3 and 5 a marshmallow, tells them that they can eat it now, or they can wait 15 minutes alone, and get double the amount of marshmallows. The choice seems pretty self-explanatory, right? Two marshmallows vs one. Wrong. 

          The results of the original experiment back in 1972 show that only 30% of children waited the full 15 minutes, and a good deal of the children jumped at the marshmallow within the first 30 seconds of it being placed in front of them.

          But why? Why does this happen?

          Well, there is a scientific reason behind our struggle between short-term rewards and long-term goals. This is the concept of instant vs delayed gratification. There are two areas of the brain: one that is associated with our emotions and the other with abstract reasoning. As you might have guessed, the emotional part of our brain responds positively to instant gratification. When given the choice of cake or broccoli, this part of your brain pushes you to choose the cake. The logical part of your brain, though, tries to reason with you. It might tell you that the broccoli is better for your long-term health and that you don't need to eat that chocolate cake. The emotion and logic-based parts of your brain are constantly in a battle, trying to show you why you should choose one option and not the other.

          So which part of our brain wins in the end? The answer is it depends on the scenario. When people get close to obtaining a reward, their emotional brain takes over. This means that when we see, touch, or smell something that we want, the temptation is too great to resist. We act impulsively because the dopamine in our brains gets all fired up. When our brain has calmed down afterward, though, we end up regretting our actions. So in the marshmallow experiment, when the marshmallow was sitting right in front of the children, it was almost like they never had a real chance. 

Communication between the hippocampus (a region associated with memory and emotion) and the nucleus accumbens (a region associated with the brain’s reward system and involved in the process of addiction) is integral to the process of delayed gratification.

          McGill University psychologists trained rats to choose between two different shapes displayed on an iPad screen, receiving sugar pellets as a reward. They could choose one shape to receive a single pellet immediately, or another to receive four pellets a little bit later. After training, the rats were willing to give up the instant gratification of one sugar pellet in return for more pellets later. However, when the researchers disrupted the circuit connecting the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens, the rats became unwilling to hold off for a larger reward, even if it only meant waiting a few extra seconds. Without it, the rats just couldn't wait. By contrast, disrupting functions in other parts of the brain, like regions involved in decision-making, did not affect the rats’ willingness to delay their dose of sugar. They still chose to delay gratification and wait for more pellets later.

          In some ways this relationship makes sense; the hippocampus is thought to have a role in future planning, and the nucleus accumbens is a 'reward' center and a major recipient of dopamine, a chemical responsible for transmitting signals related to pleasure and reward

          Further research with humans will be necessary, but these findings could eventually underpin the development of treatments for things like anxiety disorders, gambling addictions, and more. 

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