Delayed gratification

This article is about the psychology concept. For the UK magazine, see Delayed Gratification (magazine).
"Instant gratification" redirects here. For the Dance Gavin Dance album, see Instant Gratification.

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Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the ability to resist the temptation of an immediate reward in favor of a more valuable and long-lasting reward later. It involves forgoing a smaller, immediate pleasure to achieve a larger or more enduring benefit in the future.[1] A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence.

A person's ability to delay gratification relates to other similar skills such as patience, impulse control, self-control and willpower, all of which are involved in self-regulation. Broadly, self-regulation encompasses a person's capacity to adapt the self as necessary to meet demands of the environment.[2] Delaying gratification is the reverse of delay discounting, which is "the preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger but delayed rewards" and refers to the "fact that the subjective value of reward decreases with increasing delay to its receipt".[3] It is theorized that the ability to choose delayed rewards is under the control of the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS).[4]

Several factors can affect a person's ability to delay gratification. Cognitive strategies, such as the use of distracting or "cool" thoughts, can increase delay ability,[5] as can neurological factors, such as strength of connections in the frontal-striatal pathway.[6][7] Behavioral researchers have focused on the contingencies that govern choices to delay reinforcement, and have studied how to manipulate those contingencies in order to lengthen delay. Age plays a role too; children under five years old demonstrate a marked lack of delayed gratification ability and most commonly seek immediate gratification.[8] A very small difference between males and females suggest that females may be better at delaying rewards.[9] The inability to choose to wait rather than seek immediate reinforcement is related to avoidance-related behaviors such as procrastination, and to other clinical diagnoses such as anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression.[10]

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory, discussed the ego's role in balancing the immediate pleasure-driven desires of the id with the morality-driven choices of the superego. Funder and Block expanded psychoanalytic research on the topic, and found that impulsivity, or a lack of ego-control, has a stronger effect on one's ability to choose delayed rewards if a reward is more desirable.[11] Finally, environmental and social factors play a role; for example, delay is affected by the self-imposed or external nature of a reward contingency,[12] by the degree of task engagement required during the delay,[13] by early mother-child relationship characteristics,[14][15][16] by a person's previous experiences with unreliable promises of rewards (e.g., in poverty),[17] and by contemporary sociocultural expectations and paradigms. Research on animals comprises another body of literature describing delayed gratification characteristics that are not as easily tested in human samples, such as ecological factors affecting the skill.[18]

  1. ^ Carducci, Bernardo J. (2009). "Basic Processes of Mischel's Cognitive-Affective Perspective: Delay of Gratification and Conditions of Behavioral Consistency". The Psychology of Personality: Viewpoints, Research, and Applications. John Wiley and Sons. pp. 443–4. ISBN 978-1-4051-3635-8.
  2. ^ Doerr, Celeste E.; Baumeister, Roy F. (2011). "Self-Regulatory Strength and Psychological Adjustment: Implications of the Limited Resource Model of Self-Regulation". In Maddux, James E.; Tangney, June Price (eds.). Social Psychological Foundations of Clinical Psychology. Guilford Press. pp. 71–83. ISBN 978-1-60623-689-5.
  3. ^ Anokhin, Andrey P.; Golosheykin, Simon; Grant, Julia D.; Heath, Andrew C. (2010). "Heritability of Delay Discounting in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Twin Study". Behavior Genetics. 41 (2): 175–83. doi:10.1007/s10519-010-9384-7. PMC 3036802. PMID 20700643.
  4. ^ Kross, Ethan; Mischel, Walter; Shoda, Yichi (2011). "Enabling Self-Control". In Maddux, James E.; Tangney, June Price (eds.). Social Psychological Foundations of Clinical Psychology. Guilford Press. pp. 375–94. ISBN 978-1-60623-689-5.
  5. ^ Romer, Daniel; Duckworth, Angela L.; Sznitman, Sharon; Park, Sunhee (2010). "Can Adolescents Learn Self-control? Delay of Gratification in the Development of Control over Risk Taking". Prevention Science. 11 (3): 319–30. doi:10.1007/s11121-010-0171-8. PMC 2964271. PMID 20306298.
  6. ^ Fair, Damien A.; Dosenbach, Nico U. F.; Church, Jessica A.; Cohen, Alexander L.; Brahmbhatt, Shefali; Miezin, Francis M.; Barch, Deanna M.; Raichle, Marcus E.; et al. (2007). "Development of distinct control networks through segregation and integration". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (33): 13507–12. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10413507F. doi:10.1073/pnas.0705843104. JSTOR 25436514. PMC 1940033. PMID 17679691.
  7. ^ Kim, BaekSun; Im, Heh-In (2018). "The role of the dorsal striatum in choice impulsivity". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1451 (1): 92–111. doi:10.1111/nyas.13961. PMID 30277562. S2CID 52897511.
  8. ^ Mischel, Walter; Shoda, Yichi; Rodriguez, Monica L. (1992). "Delay of Gratification in Children". In Lowenstein, George; Elster, Jon (eds.). Choice Over Time. Russell Sage Foundation. pp. 147–64. ISBN 978-0-87154-558-9.
  9. ^ Tobin, Renée M.; Graziano, William G. (2009). "Delay of Gratification: A Review of Fifty Years of Regulation Research". In Hoyle, Rick H. (ed.). Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 47–63. ISBN 978-1-4443-1812-8.
  10. ^ Moss, Simon (October 11, 2011). "Temporal discounting". Psychopedia. Archived from the original on June 22, 2013. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
  11. ^ Funder, David C.; Block, Jack (1989). "The role of ego-control, ego-resiliency, and IQ in delay of gratification in adolescence". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 57 (6): 1041–50. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1041. PMID 2614657.
  12. ^ Miller, Dale T.; Karniol, Rachel (1976). "The role of rewards in externally and self-imposed delay of gratification". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 33 (5): 594–600. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.33.5.594.
  13. ^ Peake, Philip K.; Hebl, Michelle; Mischel, Walter (2002). "Strategic attention deployment for delay of gratification in working and waiting situations". Developmental Psychology. 38 (2): 313–26. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.38.2.313. PMID 11881765.
  14. ^ Sethi, Anita; Mischel, Walter; Aber, J. Lawrence; Shoda, Yuichi; Rodriguez, Monica Larrea (2000). "The role of strategic attention deployment in development of self-regulation: Predicting preschoolers' delay of gratification from mother-toddler interactions". Developmental Psychology. 36 (6): 767–77. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.36.6.767. PMID 11081700.
  15. ^ Rodriguez, Monica L.; Ayduk, Ozlem; Aber, J. Lawrence; Mischel, Walter; Sethi, Anita; Shoda, Yuichi (2005). "A Contextual Approach to the Development of Self-regulatory Competencies: The Role of Maternal Unresponsivity and Toddlers' Negative Affect in Stressful Situations". Social Development. 14: 136–157. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9507.2005.00294.x.
  16. ^ Mittal, R.; Russell, B. S.; Britner, P. A.; Peake, P. K. (2012). "Delay of Gratification in Two- and Three-Year-Olds: Associations with Attachment, Personality, and Temperament". Journal of Child and Family Studies. 22 (4): 479–489. doi:10.1007/s10826-012-9600-6. S2CID 254595202.
  17. ^ Huget, Jennifer LaRue (October 15, 2012). "A new take on the marshmallow test". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
  18. ^ Stevens, Jeffrey R.; Rosati, Alexandra G.; Ross, Kathryn R.; Hauser, Marc D. (2005). "Will Travel for Food: Spatial Discounting in Two New World Monkeys". Current Biology. 15 (20): 1855–60. Bibcode:2005CBio...15.1855S. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2005.09.016. PMC 8049090. PMID 16243033.