The Key to America's Debt Crisis

You have to watch this all the way to the end... yes, you have to resist jumping to the end... if you watch the whole thing then you will understand the secret to solving America's Debt Crisis:



There's an article by Johan Lehrer in The New Yorker that discusses the above experiment:

Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.

Update 2009jun28: There's more information about the "marshmallow test" in Wikipedia.

You can join in the research by clicking here to take the Paths to Happiness Survey conducted by the Central Michigan University. (Warning: I could not use the Opera browser to fill out the forms, I needed to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer.) Here is the "analysis" of my results:

In general, you are satisfied with most of the important aspects of your life. Overall, your level of stress seems to be about as high as most people. Lately you have a fairly typical number of worries, and tend to get sad or depressed as often as most other people. Also, you only get angry about as often as most people. In terms of physical health, you tend to be about as healthy as most people. Lately, you feel about as well as usual.

For people who are not as satisfied with life as they would like to be, the following feedback on delaying gratification may suggest useful paths for changing behavior. Foremost, your responses indicate that you are sometimes able to withstand discomfort for the sake of long-term gains, but in some areas you are more concerned with immediate pleasure. In terms of eating habits, you may prefer to eat what you want when you want it, rather than worry about long-term health concerns. In general, physical comfort is important to you, but sometimes you are willing to experience distress if there are positive long-term consequences. In social situations, you sometimes focus more on meeting your own needs than pleasing others, but seeing other people happy also makes you happy. Financially, you may try to save money when possible but also splurge from time to time. In school and work, you may have tried to work hard but sometimes procrastinated.

To me the above reads like your typical newspaper horoscope, i.e. it is vague enough to apply to most people. I was also able to see how my answers directly resulted in the mechanical "analysis" provided by the site. I didn't learn anything new about myself, but hopefully it helps the scientists.