For some children, choosing immediate, not delayed, gratification may reflect good self-regulation

What is it about?

Delaying gratification, as opposed to opting for immediate gratification, is generally understood as an indication that a child is well-adjusted, or has good self-regulation skills; research supporting this notion has largely focused on children from relatively affluent families. However, choosing to delay gratification in uncertain conditions-- e.g., as a result of poverty -- can be unwise. We examined whether and how delayed gratification choices were related to other outcomes among children of color from low-income families -- children presumed to have experience with future events being uncertain.

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Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We observed that children with better self-regulation skills and classroom behaviors chose immediate gratification more often than their peers, which is the opposite of what traditional research and theory would predict. These results may be highly specific to the measures and research protocols that were used; however, they demonstrate that proclivity toward immediate gratification may reflect adaptive, as opposed to deficient, self-regulatory development among some children in some contexts.

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