HUMANITY Class Project
Redesigning The Marshmallow Test
The Stanford Marshmallow experiment is one of the most known studies on deferred gratification. In the experiment the marshmallow was offered to each preschool child. The only rule in the experiment was whether the child could resist eating one marshmallow he was offered instead of eating two being promised other one. When this experiment redesigned, it would be prove of Freud’s argument about both religion and sense of ego.
To begin with, according to Freud, religion is regulating behavior of human majority by restricting their happiness. (Civilization and its discontent 36), and this majority surrender this restriction with “oceanic feeling” which explained in the text as the sense of boundlessness and oneness felt between the ego and the outside world (11). When he mention about the authority of religion another words the authority of God, he makes analogy with an example of father and child (85). If this analogy was considered, the relationship between father and his son there is based on not only fear of losing love or care of father but also the absolute sense of trust. The deep sense of trust of child makes him absolutely believe his father and accept his rules. Similarly in the experiment, when an authority promised to children that if they do not eat marshmallow, they will be rewarded with second one, most of children trust their promise and they try to resist eating the marshmallow. Therefore they surrender the authority by postponing their pleasure without questioning why they should do that. Parallel with Freud opinion, even if “… there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self of our own ego…” (12), most of the man prone to believe and trust to an authority with “oceanic feelings”.
On the other hand, in the experiment, some of children get a bit from marshmallow and put it back on the plate. They are taking risk and they flout a rule even if they believe that they will be rewarded with second marshmallow. It would not be wrong, making analogy with the argument of Freud which is indicated to inconsistency of oceanic feelings. “One may, he thinks rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone even if one rejects every belief and every illusion.” (11). As for the last group of children, they eat marshmallow without any hesitate. This group of children reminds people who not only do not care about any reward but also refuse to accept this kind of reward from any authority because of their aggressive and rejective nature.
As for the second aspect, according to Freud’s argument, Human kind come to world with their ids which is the most primitive form of carrying out of human desire. Id has an important role when men strive to be happy by pursuing his pleasure. This experiment is a good example for make distinguish between id, ego and super ego. When children were observed, instructor is accepted as super ego which is effected id and ego of children. She makes rules and show that which situation is favor of child. Then she left them alone with their sense of ego and id. Their sense of id forces them to eat marshmallow for their pleasure and their ego obstruct that for his favor and more happiness. First group children can be control their desire to eat marshmallow, second group trying to cheat and last group just eat the marshmallow without any attempt to control their id. In reality, none of them prefer to eat one marshmallow instead of two, however their id prevent to have two of them to reach pleasure as soon as possible.
In this point the age of children is important because, according to Freud, sense of super ego develops in time, and as a stated before in the example of father and son relationship, in early age of childhood sense of id mostly controlled by parents. Their sense of ego and then sense of super ego are developed with their age. If this experiment redesigned with children different age, it helps to observe super ego development with respect to age.
As a conclusion, The Stanford Marshmallow experiment which was designed for observing deferred gratification, is good example proving idea of Freud which is include religion and id-ego-super ego relation.
When a biographical introduction of Freud was considered (xi), it was obvious that Freud did not performed such kind of experiment, but after he got degree from medical school and started working in psychiatry department of the hospital, where he had a chance to observe psychologically diseased people. Most probably, his position in hospital and one to one relation with them helped to shape his idea. When observation method of Freud and experimental research such as Stanford Marshmallow tests was compared, Freud’s observations are not true for all people and this makes incredibly difficult to generalization of his idea and, scale up them to majority of people. Even if Freud had a chance to observe many kind of psychologically diseased people, these people could not be accepted as majority. Therefore making generalization about people, just based on these examples, causes discrepancies. When the Marshmallow Test was considered, obviously majority of children first tried not to eat the marshmallow although their age is young, in contrast with the Freud’s idea about human controlled by their id.
As a conclusion, The Stanford Marshmallow experiment which was designed for observing deferred gratification, is good example proving the idea of Freud. Even if Freud’s methodology is different than this research and his observation does not include majority of people redesigning of this experiment helps to prove Freud’s argument about religion.
Reference
Freud S. Civilization and Discontents, the Stanford Edition W.W Norton NY 1961nd id-ego-super ego relationship.
