Socioeconomic Status and Delayed Gratification in Children

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The children selected were all Caucasian except for one African American child. The gender distribution was 58% female and 42% male. In today's economy, many families cannot afford the luxury of sending their children to preschool. With this being said, it must be taken into consideration that the children primarily come from upper and middle class families. This factor may have affected the decisions of the children. There is no question as to whether or not these children are fed at home, and in turn may have been unable to wait because they were simply that hungry. If anything, the children may have demonstrated compulsive tendencies because they are "spoiled" and are not used to having to wait for the things they desire.
While these results cannot prove that three-year-olds struggle to delay gratification, the results do point …show more content…

One can always try to minimize their effects as much as possible, but they will never stop to exist. One of the biggest limitations within this experiment was the sample size. While a sample of 12 children offers some data, the level of significance is somewhat low. A significant underlying factor was that the entire body of test subjects go to preschool. In preschool, children are taught how to be successful in their future careers as students; they are undeniably encouraged to delay gratification daily. I feel as though the room the study was conducted may have limited the study. There were no completely barren rooms within the school. All the rooms are thriving with graphics strewn about and color splashed upon every surface. I feel like the students would have been forced into looking at the marshmallow more if it would have been the most interesting object within the room. With all of this being said, in the future if I were to conduct a similar experiment, I would be sure to gather a more diverse subject pool. I would also like to use a whitewashed or otherwise mundane

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