Here's a twist on a psychology classic: the Stanford Marshmallow experiment - a study on delayed gratification. In the original experiment, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward (a marshmallow), or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time alone in a room, staring at the marshmallow but not eating it. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index, and other life measures.
A blog post from an old applied improv conference colleague brought this study to mind. She spoke of what she referred to as Marshmallow Test 2.0, in which you conduct the experiment on kids living in the shelter system. In that experiment, each trial is more a test of privilege. The kids have to believe and trust that the original and second treat will be there if they wait. It turns out, many under-privileged kids have learned to eat when the treat is available - not to wait for someone else to maybe take it first. So naturally, their scores in later life are already skewed, not based on will-power but on their survival-oriented upbringing.
That's an interesting thought.
What came to mind for me, though, was the three Value Personae that I suggest operate within all of us. (An idea from Robert Reich that I expanded on.) I now theorize that the Consumer value persona - the one which values immediate gratification and looks after present needs - might be the earliest value persona, from an evolutionary perspective. We see lots of plants and animals exhibit this approach to resources, and it's not surprising that younger kids will express this tendency as well. There's a marshmallow. I like marshmallows. Munch!
The Marshmallow Test is kind of checking for the presence of our Investor value persona. Are we willing to wait, resist consumption now, and reap some benefits in the future? As animals evolve, some species seem to become more aware of future needs and have learned to set food aside for leaner times. That Investor behaviour might be considered a sign of evolutionary progress (or a predictor of better life outcomes in children).
Given that perspective, I naturally had to ask myself where the third value persona - the Citizen - might fit in. The Citizen is our value set that looks after the needs of others or the collective. Perhaps a test could be easily devised with two kids, where, if the first child resists the temptation to eat the marshmallow, then they both get one. Surely that says something about the first kid's ability to co-operate, share, and show empathy for their fellow human being. Since (I believe) we only tend to see such behaviours in collective-oriented or cognitively-advanced species, I recently posited that perhaps the Citizen value persona is yet another step up on the evolutionary ladder.
My Value Personae theory proposes that each one of us has all three value sets available to us at any time, and that they are exclusive. If I give you $50, you can either spend it (Consumer), save it (Investor), or give it away (Citizen). All three actions can give us joy, but you can only do one of those choices.
A Fourth Value Persona?
So, if you're wondering how humanity might evolve to the next level, what might that be? Increasingly, I believe that the fourth value persona might encompass some kind of realization that we are all connected to our environment and every other living thing in complex and inextricable ways. I'm still trying to figure this out and express it as a value. One thing I'm sure of is that the fourth value persona would not be based on any kind of zero-sum game, but rather one where there is no game.
One of the real-world expressions of this fourth value persona is a Guaranteed Universal Basic Income. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that a Basic Income is humanity's way of severing the connection between the imperative of a job and basic survival. That game-changing concept could be the first step to solving what I call the Value Change Conundrum, and escape the paradigm of "More is Always Better" that I suggest is at the core of civilization's ecological overshoot, sociological shortfall, and all major global disasters.
I guess in that study, we just give every child a marshmallow when they need one, and we move on to other life priorities.
