book: The Marshmallow Test

a very interesting presentation and book!

a sidenote: Long Now foundation made all videos public/free.
Before, that was available only for members.
After making videos free, number of paid members has increased!
Another "proof" of "doing well by doing good"

Walter Mischel: The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control - The Long Now

"Can “delay ability” be trained? Mischel thinks it can, if we understand how our mind works.
He and colleagues postulated a “Hot System” and a “Cool System” in the brain. (They are similar to Daniel Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.) 

• The Hot System (Go!) is: emotional, simple, reflexive, fast, and centered in the amygdala. It develops early in the child and is exacerbated by stress. 
• The Cool System (Know), on the other hand, is: cognitive rather than emotional, complex, reflective, slow, and centered in the frontal lobes and hippocampus. It develops later in the child and is made weaker by stress. 

In the Hot System the stimulus controls us; in the Cool System we control the stimulus.

You can chill a hot object of desire by representing it to yourself in Cool, abstract terms. 
Don’t think of the marshmallow as yummy and chewy; imagine it as round and white like a cotton ball. One little girl became patient by pretending she was looking at a picture of a marshmallow 

and “put a frame around it” in her head. “You can’t eat a picture,” she explained. ...
If you don’t know how to delay gratification,you don’t have a choice.
If you do know how, you have a choice.”

The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel | Brian Johnson
video review: The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel - YouTube

• Hot vs Cool (brain)
• U + Future U
• WillPower
• If-then
• Choice

Walter Mischel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Mischel @columbia.edu