Кейінгі сыйлыққа жедел сыйлықтан бас тарту психологиясы

Resistance of an immediate reward in return for a later reward
the psychology concept

Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the resistance to the temptation of an immediate pleasure in the hope of obtaining a valuable and long lasting reward in the long term. In other words, delayed gratification describes the process that the subject undergoes when the subject resists the temptation of an immediate reward in preference for a later reward that is more favorable. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later. A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence. A person's ability to delay gratification relates to other similar skills such as patience, impulse control, self control and willpower, all of which are involved in self regulation. Broadly, self regulation encompasses a person's capacity to adapt the self as necessary to meet demands of the environment. Delaying gratification is the reverse of delay discounting, which is "the preference for smaller immediate rewards over larger but delayed rewards" and refers to the "fact that the subjective value of reward decreases with increasing delay to its receipt". It is theorized that the ability to choose delayed rewards is under the control of the cognitive affective personality system (CAPS). Several factors can affect a person's ability to delay gratification. Cognitive strategies, such as the use of distracting or "cool" thoughts, can increase delay ability, as can neurological factors, such as strength of connections in the frontal striatal pathway. Behavioral researchers have focused on the contingencies that govern choices to delay reinforcement, and have studied how to manipulate those contingencies in order to lengthen delay. Age plays a role too; children under five years old demonstrate a marked lack of delayed gratification ability and most commonly seek immediate gratification. A very small difference between males and females suggest that females may be better at delaying rewards. The inability to choose to wait rather than seek immediate reinforcement is related to avoidance related behaviors such as procrastination, and to other clinical diagnoses such as anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory, discussed the ego's role in balancing the immediate pleasure driven desires of the id with the morality driven choices of the superego. Funder and Block expanded psychoanalytic research on the topic, and found that impulsivity, or a lack of ego control, has a stronger effect on one's ability to choose delayed rewards if a reward is more desirable. Finally, environmental and social factors play a role; for example, delay is affected by the self imposed or external nature of a reward contingency, by the degree of task engagement required during the delay, by early mother child relationship characteristics, by a person's previous experiences with unreliable promises of rewards (e. g., in poverty), and by contemporary sociocultural expectations and paradigms. Research on animals comprises another body of literature describing delayed gratification characteristics that are not as easily tested in human samples, such as ecological factors affecting the skill.

One well supported theory of self regulation, called the Cognitive affective personality system (CAPS), suggests that delaying gratification results from an ability to use "cool" regulatory strategies (i. e., calm, controlled and cognitive strategies) over "hot regulatory strategies (i. e., emotional, impulsive, automatic reactions), when faced with provocation.

The seminal research on delayed gratification – the now famous "marshmallow experiment" – was conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960s and 1970s at Stanford University. Mischel and his colleagues were interested in strategies that preschool children used to resist temptation. They presented four year olds with a marshmallow and told the children that they had two options: (1) ring a bell at any point to summon the experimenter and eat the marshmallow, or (2) wait until the experimenter returned (about 15 minutes later), and earn two marshmallows. The message was: "small reward now, bigger reward later." Some children broke down and ate the marshmallow, whereas others were able to delay gratification and earn the coveted two marshmallows. In follow up experiments, Mischel found that children were able to wait longer if they used certain "cool" distraction techniques (covering their eyes, hiding under the desk, singing songs, or imagining pretzels instead of the marshmallow in front of them), or if they changed the way they thought about the marshmallow (focusing on its similarity to a cotton ball, rather than on its gooey, delectable taste). The children who waited longer, when re evaluated as teenagers and adults, demonstrated a striking array of advantages over their peers. As teenagers, they had higher SAT scores, social competence, self assuredness and self worth, and were rated by their parents as more mature, better able to cope with stress, more likely to plan ahead, and more likely to use reason. As adults, the high delayers were less likely to have drug problems or other addictive behaviors, get divorced, or be overweight. Each minute, that a preschooler was able to delay gratification translated on average to a reduction of 0.2 points of the Body Mass Index 30 years later. Each of these positive outcomes requires some ability to forgo short term reward in favor of a higher payoff in the future. The ability to delay gratification also appears to be a buffer against rejection sensitivity (the tendency to be anxious when anticipating interpersonal rejection). In a 20 year follow up of the marshmallow experiment, individuals with vulnerability to high rejection sensitivity who had shown strong delay of gratification abilities as preschoolers had higher self esteem and self worth and more adaptive coping skills, in comparison to the individuals who had high rejection sensitivity but low delay of gratification as four year olds. Casey and colleagues also scanned the brains of 26 participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they completed the task. The researchers hypothesized that high delayers would be more likely to use "cool" regulation strategies to control their responses, which would manifest as activation of the right prefrontal cortex, whereas low delayers would use "hot" strategies, which would activate the ventral striatum, an area also linked to addiction. Indeed, results showed this differential brain activity.

The way that a person frames a situation heavily influences a decision's outcome. Research on "hot" and "cool" strategies suggests that when children cognitively represent what they are waiting for as a real reward by focusing on the reward's arousing, "hot" qualities (taste, smell, sound, feel, etc.) their self control and delay of gratification decreases, while directing attention to a symbol of the reward by focusing on its abstract, "cool" qualities (shape, color, number, etc. ), can enhance self control and increase the delay. Optimal self control and the longest delay to gratification can be achieved by directing attention to a competing item, especially the arousing, "hot" qualities of a competing item. as well as a pleasure center. The limbic system will always react to the potential for instant pleasure. It has been shown that learning to delay gratification promotes positive social behavior, such as sharing and positive peer interactions.

In a 2011 study, researchers tested to see if people would willingly choose between instant and delayed gratification by offering them a set amount of (hypothetical) money that they could receive presently, or telling them they could wait a month for more money. Results suggested that willingness to delay gratification depended on the amount of money being offered, but also showed wide individual variation in the threshold of later reward that was motivating enough to forgo the immediate reward. A 2001 study demonstrated that if a reward will not be granted for an extensive amount of time, such as 180–300 months (15–25 years), the monetary amount of the reward is inconsequential; instead, the bulk of the participants choose the immediate reward, even if their delayed reward would be quite large. Delayed gratification has its limits, and a delay can only be so long before it is judged to be not worth the effort it takes to wait.

Compared to neurotypical children, those with ADHD generally demonstrate greater impulsivity by being influenced by reward immediacy and quality more than by the frequency of reward and effort to obtain it. However, researchers have empirically shown that these impulsive behavior patterns can be changed through the implementation of a simple self control training procedure in which reinforcer immediacy competes with the frequency, quantity or saliency of the reward. One study demonstrated that any verbal activity while waiting for reinforcement increases delay to gratification in participants with ADHD. Children under five years old display the least effective strategies for delaying gratification, such as looking at the reward and thinking about its arousing features. By 5 years old, most children are able to demonstrate better self control by recognizing the counter productivity of focusing on the reward. Five year olds often choose instead to actively distract themselves or even use self instructions to remind themselves of the contingency that waiting produces a reward of a greater value. Between 8 and 13 years old, children develop the cognitive ability to differentiate and employ abstract versus arousing thoughts in order to distract their minds from the reward and thereby increase the delay. Declines in self regulation and impulse control in old age predict corresponding declines in reward delaying strategies, specifically reduced temporal discounting due to a decrease in cooling strategies.

Throughout 33 studies on gender differences, a small significant effect (r = .06) has been found This effect may be related to the slight gender differences found in delay discounting (i. e., minimizing the value of a delayed reward) and higher levels of impulsivity and inattention in boys. Further studies are needed to analyze if this minute difference begins at a certain age (e. g., puberty) or if it has a stable magnitude throughout the lifespan. Some researchers suggest this gender difference may correspond with a mother's tendency to sacrifice her wants and needs in order to meet those of her child more frequently than a father does. by clinical and social psychologists, suggesting that the ability to delay gratification plays a critical role in a person's overall psychological adjustment. People with better ability to delay gratification report higher wellbeing, self esteem and openness to experience, as well as more productive ways of responding to anger and other provocations. as are substance abuse, gambling, and other addictive behaviors in adolescents and adults. This may stem from the high correlation between intelligence and delayed gratification, One experiment, however, did not find any significant differences between samples with OCD and healthy controls in delayed gratification, while finding substantially improved delayed gratification among those with obsessive–compulsive personality disorder. Depression is also associated with lower capacity to delay gratification, though the direction of cause and effect is not clear. A depressed person who has difficulty pushing themself to engage in previously enjoyed activities is (deliberately or not) prioritizing short term comfort and is demonstrating an impaired ability to delay gratification. There is evidence that individuals who engage in deliberate self harm (e. g. cut themselves) are less able to tolerate emotional distress but are more able to tolerate physical pain. Thus it is argued that they injure themselves because they cannot delay gratification and need a way to end emotional pain quickly.

Sigmund Freud viewed the struggle to delay gratification as a person's efforts to overcome the instinctive, libidinal drive of the id. According to classic psychoanalytic theory, a person's psyche is composed of the id, ego and superego.

Factors affecting one's ability to delay gratification depend on whether the delay contingency is self imposed (delay can be terminated at the will of the person waiting) or externally imposed by another person, institution or circumstance. When the contingency is self imposed, the physical presence of the reward seems to aid in delaying gratification. On the other hand, when the delay is externally imposed, children are not able to wait as long when the reward is present, suggesting greater frustration under these circumstances. One such cost is the basic opportunity cost associated with time spent waiting. While waiting, individuals lose time that could be used to find other food. Seeking high calorie food conveys a clear evolutionary advantage. Second, there is the risk that the chance to get the reward will be cut short, perhaps by a predator, also known as a termination risk. In a study conducted by Haden and Platt, macaque monkeys were given the choice of a medium reward that they knew they would receive, versus a more risky choice. The riskier choice would reward the monkey with a large reward fifty percent of the time, and a small reward the other fifty percent. The ultimate payoff was the same, but the monkeys preferred the riskier choice. They speculated that the monkeys did not see their action as risky, but rather as a large, delayed reward. They reasoned that the monkeys viewed the large reward as certain: if they did not get the large reward the first time around, they would eventually get it, but at a longer delay. To test for this theory, they gave the same test while varying the time between the opportunities to choose a reward. They found that as the interval increased, the number of times that the monkeys chose the more risky reward decreased. One study looked at how reward discounting is context specific. By differing the time and space between small and large rewards, they were able to test how these factors affected the decision making in tamarins and marmosets. They showed that tamarins will travel longer distances for larger food rewards, but will not wait as long as marmosets. Conversely, marmosets will wait longer, but will not travel as far. They then concluded that this discounting behavior directly correlates to the normal feeding behavior of species. The tamarins feed over large distances, looking for insects. Capturing and eating insects requires a quick and impulsive decision and action. The marmosets, on the other hand, eat tree sap, which takes more time to secrete, but does not require that the marmosets to cover large distances. The physiological similarities between humans and other animals, especially primates, have led to more comparative research between the two groups. Future research with animal models then can expand our own understanding of how people make decisions about instant versus delayed gratification in the real world.