Study on self control in childhood shows link to adulthood
By Nelson Daily Staff
By Jennifer Carpenter, Environmental News Network
Stop it! Don’t touch that! Sit down and be quiet! Whether you heeded these commands as a child could help predict your future.
A new study suggests that people who show less self-control as young children are more likely to have failing health, greater debt, and run-ins with the law later in life.
The idea that willpower is important for success is not new. In the late 1960s, Walter Mischel, a psychologist at Columbia University, tested whether four-year-old children could resist nibbling Oreo cookies when left alone with a plate of them.
He and colleagues found a huge range in willpower, and those children better at resisting the temptation went on to do better in school, scoring higher on the standardized tests. Their parents also judged them to be more attentive, competent, and intelligent.
Intrigued, psychologist Terrie Moffitt of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and her colleagues sought real-life data to test whether individuals with more willpower and not just self-discipline when offered cookies, achieved greater success in life.
The international team tracked approximately 1000 New Zealand children, born in 1972 or 1973, from the age of three years until their early 30s, and another 500 British fraternal twins, born in 1994 or 1995, from the ages of four years to 12 years.
They used a range of measures to assess the children’s self-control, including their impulsivity, persistence at a task, patience while waiting in line, and hyperactivity.
Article continues: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/dont-take-that-cookie.html?rss=1
