The United States Just Took the Marshmallow Test. And Failed.

Do you remember the Marshmallow Test?

It’s a famous experiment run by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel to test young children’s ability to delay gratification. The researchers placed kids in a room with a treat and gave them a choice: they could eat the treat, or they could wait fifteen minutes, at which time they could exchange it for a more desirable treat. It’s amusing to watch the kids as they struggle to muster the required will power.

Approximately one-third of the kids in the study were able to make it the full fifteen minutes. The self-control necessary to wait for the better treat turns out to be predictive of future success. The toddlers who succeeded at the Marshmallow Test scored higher on their SATs as teenagers.

As Paul Krugman has pointed out, we had our own national version of the Marshmallow Test this spring. And, sadly, we made it about halfway, then we gave up and gobbled the damn thing down.

By rushing to re-open the economy before fully suppressing transmission of the coronavirus, we chose the “treat” of a partial return to normalcy in May and June over the opportunity for a more complete and permanent re-opening that would have been possible around July 1. As a result, we will be dealing with more sickness, more death, and a…