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TDS We Don't Have to Look at the Marshmallow! - A Concept that Helps me Avoid Abuse

Druidus

Druidus

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
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598
From Edge.org, here is a brief essay:

JONAH LEHRER
Contributing Editor, Wired; Author, How We Decide

Control Your Spotlight

In the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel began a simple experiment with four-year old children. He invited the kids into a tiny room, containing a desk and a chair, and asked them to pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Mischel then made the four-year olds an offer: they could either eat one treat right away or, if they were willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, they could have two treats when he returned. Not surprisingly, nearly every kid chose to wait.

At the time, psychologists assumed that the ability to delay gratification — to get that second marshmallow or cookie — depended on willpower. Some people simply had more willpower than others, which allowed them to resist tempting sweets and save money for retirement.

However, after watching hundreds of kids participate in the marshmallow experiment, Mischel concluded that this standard model was wrong. He came to realize that willpower was inherently weak, and that children that tried to outlast the treat — gritting their teeth in the face of temptation — soon lost the battle, often within thirty seconds.

Instead, Mischel discovered something interesting when he studied the tiny percentage of kids who could successfully wait for the second treat. Without exception, these "high delayers" all relied on the same mental strategy: they found a way to keep themselves from thinking about the treat, directing their gaze away from the yummy marshmallow. Some covered their eyes or played hide-and-seek underneath the desk. Others sang songs from "Sesame Street," or repeatedly tied their shoelaces, or pretended to take a nap. Their desire wasn't defeated — it was merely forgotten.

Mischel refers to this skill as the "strategic allocation of attention," and he argues that it's the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber. But that's wrong — willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It's about realizing that if we're thinking about the marshmallow we're going to eat it, which is why we need to look away.

What's interesting is that this cognitive skill isn't just a useful skill for dieters. Instead, it seems to be a core part of success in the real world. For instance, when Mischel followed up with the initial subjects 13 years later — they were now high school seniors — he realized that performance on the marshmallow task was highly predictive on a vast range of metrics. Those kids who struggled to wait at the age of four were also more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. Most impressive, perhaps, were the academic numbers: The little kid who could wait fifteen minutes for their marshmallow had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.

These correlations demonstrate the importance of learning to strategically allocate our attention. When we properly control the spotlight, we can resist negative thoughts and dangerous temptations. We can walk away from fights and improve our odds against addiction. Our decisions are driven by the facts and feelings bouncing around the brain — the allocation of attention allows us to direct this haphazard process, as we consciously select the thoughts we want to think about.

Furthermore, this mental skill is only getting more valuable. We live, after all, in the age of information, which makes the ability to focus on the important information incredibly important. (Herbert Simon said it best: "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.") The brain is a bounded machine and the world is a confusing place, full of data and distractions — intelligence is the ability to parse the data so that it makes just a little bit more sense. Like willpower, this ability requires the strategic allocation of attention.

One final thought: In recent decades, psychology and neuroscience have severely eroded classical notions of free will. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind. And yet, we can still control the spotlight of attention, focusing on those ideas that will help us succeed. In the end, this may be the only thing we can control. We don't have to look at the marshmallow.
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Quite simply, replace "marshmallow" with whatever substance you are struggling with an addiction to, and the same principle applies. The key to avoiding temptation to relapse or abuse a substance is to direct your attention away from it however you can. If you think about it, if you look at it, you will fall to its power.

Sure, it's very hard to direct your attention elsewhere, especially when craving. But this is the only means we have of reliably controlling our urges. Willpower is not enough, we have to immerse our attention in something else all together and avoid even thinking about whatever we want to avoid.

This is how I've maintained myself since I quit IV opiates, and is also how I've cut down on smoking, cannabis, drinking, and basically all drugs I used to use. I just don't think about them, and replace a focus on them with a focus on other stimuli. It really, really, helps, if you can get to the point where controlling your attention/focus is at least somewhat doable.

We don't have to look at the marshmallow. Whenever I crave, I remember that phrase. Then I meditate, before reading/writing something. Use whatever works for you.
 
^^ thank you very much for posting this!! I believe TDS is a place that everyone who feels they have a strategy or thought or a new idea about addiction should post it, really it been a little while on this whole addiction thing and results for survival with a good life are pretty low still.. I know for a fact that the process of learning to live happily with an addiction has a long way to go for SOME people and has arrived for a portion of Us addicts<3, I say lets hear all techniques that have showed promise in any of our addict lives as well as pieces of existing techniques that people have found worked the best.. come on we can do better than what we have to battle this...

Thanks again.. IMO willpower is like anything else in life and the strategy of not looking at the marshmallow is the best thing a young kid came up with.:\
 
I use this with food cravings but with a slight twist. Before I stop "looking at the marshmallow" I look at it very intently and I check in with my emotions. Am I bored? Am I lonely? Am I stressed? Am I actually hungry? Usually there is some emotion that needs attending to and the desire for food (usually sweet) is the distraction.
 
I don't really think the experiments with the little kids can be compared to addicts trying not to relapse.

What it CAN be compared to is those times when we have to choose between holding out for the best drug deal or taking a worse one right away. I can get a big bag of fire if I wait a few hours for my main dude, or I can get a smaller amount of weaker dope right now…. And whenever I chose to hold out, then ya it became all about distractions.

I think the kids that waited would probably also be able to better hold out for a better drug deal, but for a person in recovery WHO IS NOT CHOOSING BETWEEN TWO SIMILAR REWARDS LIKE THIS, I think a completely different set of experiments would be needed to conclude anything worthwhile.
 
^I think it has some relevance. Recovery is sort of like holding out for double the treats later instead of taking a lesser treat immediately. If you get a craving you can choose to do something else to distract yourself. Such studies are simplistic as an analogy to sobriety but still hold some insight I think - the main point, that it's hard to resist something through brute force "willpower" alone, still applies to getting/staying clean.
 
give the kids a cell phone and tell them the number is in there to get a marsh mellow delivered at any point for the rest of their life but don't do it and see how many of them make it:( but i agree it better not to look!!
 
Swimmingdancer said:
^I think it has some relevance. Recovery is sort of like holding out for double the treats later instead of taking a lesser treat immediately. If you get a craving you can choose to do something else to distract yourself. Such studies are simplistic as an analogy to sobriety but still hold some insight I think - the main point, that it's hard to resist something through brute force "willpower" alone, still applies to getting/staying clean.
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Thanks, Swimmingdancer.

I know they're not completely analogous, the marshmallow experiment's findings and drug addiction, but I still see valuable lessons in the experiment.

Using the drug you're addicted to when you know you shouldn't is like eating the one marshmallow. Abstaining, or using responsibly, is like holding out for a better reward. That reward being all the potential benefits of living a life that isn't controlled by a psychoactive, including more money, better relationships, more time for other recreational pursuits, a healthier body/brain, the ability to hold down a job or attend uni/college, etc.

If you go for the one marshmallow (the drug you know is holding you back and negatively influencing your life), then you get none of the rewards of abstaining. If you abstain, by focusing on something else, then the path to said rewards is, while rough in nature, at least travel-able.

I think the main insight I like about this experiment is the need to FOCUS your attention, and control what you allow into your mind; to not just rely on fickle "willpower".
 
neversickanymore said:
give the kids a cell phone and tell them the number is in there to get a marsh mellow delivered at any point for the rest of their life but don't do it and see how many of them make it:( but i agree it better not to look!!
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Hey, I'm not saying this is a silver bullet. I, too, was seriously tempted to relapse many, many times, simply because I know the right phone numbers to call.

Still, the marshmallow trick helped me avoid making those calls. I tried to focus on something other than the pre-marshmallow of a phone call. It's not perfect, but ANY tools with the potential to help people who are in our shoes should be available to those willing to use them. I just posted this article because I hoped it could help someone else like it helped me.
 
Thank you very much for posting this OP. I'm finally trying to get to grips with >24 hour periods of sobriety, and this technique will be very helpful. Everyone says that hobbies are important, but it's nice to see this validated by a study.
 
Druidus said:
Hey, I'm not saying this is a silver bullet. I, too, was seriously tempted to relapse many, many times, simply because I know the right phone numbers to call.

Still, the marshmallow trick helped me avoid making those calls. I tried to focus on something other than the pre-marshmallow of a phone call. It's not perfect, but ANY tools with the potential to help people who are in our shoes should be available to those willing to use them. I just posted this article because I hoped it could help someone else like it helped me.
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As I posted earlier I was very happy you posted the article.. This was just my take on it. Hope you are doing well.
 
As I am tapering right now I find this very relevant. I noticed right away that I felt totally different when I was clockwatching for my next dose vs when I would get engaged in something else. Even just little things that weren't necessarily fun, like fixing my modem or doing the dishes. A few times I forgot that it was the time allotted for my next dose. I don't think the situations are analogous in the sense that marshmallows=drugs. It's more about what it says about the concept of "willpower", which most people think of as being tough and gritting your teeth and suffering through something. These kids found a strategy that made waiting for what wanted more bearable instead of obsessing about it and breaking down.

I know sometimes it's hard to not obsessed and you don't feel like doing anything and everything feels awful, but time and time again you hear so many recovering addicts say that keeping themselves busy was key and I have to agree it can be one of the most useful tools sometimes.
 
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