For this blog I decided to talk about a video I have watched a few times and I am constantly thinking about and talking about with friends. It’s just had such an impact on me, so I was happy to watch it again for this project. Long story short, in Dunedin, New Zealand a study got underway in 1972. Every child born in that town in that year was put into a longitudinal study. They are the longest studied humans on earth and there are about 1000 of them. They are even allowed to confess to capital crimes to the scientists and not suffer any charges. Every year they get studied. It’s very interesting and I highly recommend spending a night and watching them. I do give very good recommendations so go ahead and watch them.

That all aside, I wanted to talk about something that piqued my interest the most. It starts at 33:10 in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqThvpFck3s which is in essence episode 1 of the series. It’s when they talk about what makes people successful. Is it the smartest child who grows up to be successful? They have actually figured out how to spot a successful child at age 4 by checking their self control. A child with very good self control is way more likely to become successful. 

But how do you test a 4 year olds self control? The marshmallow test of course. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s when they put a child in a room in a chair, in front of a table. They put one marshmallow in front of them. They tell the child, you can have this one marshmallow now, or if you wait 15 minutes and I come back and the marshmallow is still there, then you can have a reward of another marshmallow or a pretzel. Some obviously ate the marshmallow right away (bad self control) and some were totally able to wait, having learned great skills in self control. Whether they looked away, sang songs or turned their backs, they had already learned this skill.

So what does this mean for those of us at age 4 that would have gobbled down that first marshmallow? Are we totally screwed? No!! That’s the remarkable thing. Self control can be learned at any age. Some scientists make what I think is a fantastic point, that if we could teach self control in school, we could save the taxpayers billions of dollars. The typical person that eats unhealthy their whole life, gets told they have diabetes or high cholesterol, and are unable to make changes. They simply lack self control to make the dietary changes. If they could garner the self control to stop eating the problem foods, the hospital system would be way better off and so would the patient.

This is just a fantastic story. We can learn self control at any age, as self control is the bigger predictor of a successful life (being happy, earning a great income, having friends etc.).

Episode 1 that I was talking about full episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqThvpFck3s

Episode 2 full episode if your curious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjkGXuM1Dhs

Episode 3 (only place I could find it really…. It’s a really good one too though!)

The nature versus nurture argument is investigated. It is a genetic switch which is thrown by life events; nature loads the gun but nurture pulls the trigger.

https://tv.apple.com/us/episode/when-genes-mix-with-the-wrong-environment/umc.cmc.56m3befc03fqtgs08qwqyxqz4?showId=umc.cmc.1hs0yhhkxyt9d4w5oo8tv6f3q

Episode 4 

Finally we take a look at the effects of modern life and ageing; how excessive cleanliness affects asthma & allergies, how poverty gets under the skin to cause lifelong damage, and predicting mental illness by looking at the back of people’s eyes.

https://tv.apple.com/us/episode/dirt-is-good-dirt-poor-is-bad/umc.cmc.24skhtxhcfmu52yg2gvf58sha?l=en