Each time I catch the Haribo advertisement on television I feel
a smidgen of discomfort. The premise is that ‘Haribo is just too
good’, so the assembled children are told that if they can
resist eating the sweet placed in front of them for a few
minutes they will be given another one. When I was doing my
teacher training I remember being told about the Stanford
Marshmallow Experiment, which works along similar lines. The
experiment was carried out in the late 1960s by a psychologist
called Walter Mischel and took place at the Bing Nursery on the
Stanford campus. The experiment involved more than 600 children,
with each sat in an empty room and asked to choose either an
Oreo biscuit, a marshmallow or a pretzel. Most, I believe,
picked the marshmallow. The room was plain and bare, so there
was little distraction. The children were told by a researcher
that they could eat the marshmallow, but if they waited for 15
minutes they would be given a second one as a reward and could
eat both. The researcher then left t