Here is an excerpt from Alix Spiegel’s 4/6/09 article, “Willpower: A Game of Strategy.”
Willpower is a very familiar phrase, but what is it really and where does it come from? What happens in the mind when you resist your impulses in the face of temptation?
One person who has looked at this question in detail is a psychology professor at Columbia University named Walter Mischel. Mischel, who is sometimes referred to as the grandfather of self-regulation research, designed a series of very famous experiments in the 1960s now popularly known as the marshmallow tests.
To do the experiments, he put hundreds of 4-year-olds in a room, one by one, with a marshmallow or cookie on the table in front of each. He told them he was going to leave the room and that the child could either eat the treat immediately or, if they could wait until he got back, and have two instead. To read on, click here.
