Walter Mischel

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Walter Mischel (born February 22, 1930 in Vienna ; † September 12, 2018 in New York City ) was an American personality psychologist of Austrian origin who held the Robert Johnston Niven Professorship at Columbia University . According to a study published in the Review of General Psychology in 2002 , Walter Mischel ranks 25th among the most frequently cited psychologists of the 20th century in textbooks. Using his marshmallow test , he demonstrated the importance of delaying reward in a person's academic, emotional, and social success.

Life

After Austria's annexation to the German Reich in 1938, Mischel's family fled to the United States; Mischel's grandfather's US citizenship certificate was helpful for this. He grew up in Brooklyn and studied with George A. Kelly and Julian B. Rotter at Ohio State University , where he received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

Mischel then taught at the University of Colorado , from 1958 at Harvard University and from 1962 at Stanford University . In 1983, Mischel moved back to the east coast, where he has since researched and taught at Columbia University . He died at home in Manhattan in September 2018 at the age of 88 of complications from pancreatic cancer .

Personality model

Mischel criticized the low predictive power of the trait approach in personality psychology and called for greater consideration of the situational parameters. Often behavior is influenced more by situational factors than by personality traits. This view is now called interactionism, but Mischel's first publication Personality and Assessment (1968) does not use this term. His view of personality led to intense debates with Eysenck .

The cognitive personality model developed by Mischel in the 1970s explains different behaviors through five personal variables:

  • Competence: Knowledge and skills that enable certain cognitions of behavior
  • Encoding strategies: type of individual to process information through selection, categorization and associations
  • Expectation: anticipating likely outcomes of taking certain actions in certain situations
  • Personal values: importance given to stimuli, results, people and activities
  • Self-regulating systems and plans: learned rules for behavior control, goal setting and effectiveness evaluation

The effects of these person variables depend on the ambiguity or ambiguity of a situation. If a situation is ambiguous or doubtful, the person variables have their greatest impact.

The delayed reward paradigm

From 1968 to 1974, he carried out delayed reward experiments with about four-year-old children from the Stanford Campus Preschool. In individual sessions, the children were shown a coveted object, for example a marshmallow (in variants of the experiment, cookies, savory biscuits or plastic poker chips were used). The experimenter informed each child that they would be out of the room for some time and made it clear that they could ring a bell to call them back and they would receive a marshmallow. But if it waited for the experimenter to return on its own, it would receive two marshmallows. If the child did not ring the bell, the experimenter would usually return after 15 minutes. The average waiting times of the children amounted to approx. 6 to 10 minutes in various modifications of the experiment, but varied widely around these mean values.

Mischel found in follow-up studies from 1980–1981: The longer the children waited in the original experiment, the more competent they were described as adolescents in school and social areas, and the better they could deal with frustration and stress and withstand temptation; in addition, they also showed a tendency towards higher academic performance.

After these experiments and follow-up examinations had had a worldwide response in research and the media for decades, Mischel summarized his results in 2014 (German 2015) in a generally understandable book. A review in the FAZ emphasized the many vivid examples for the implementation in everyday life and the conclusion, "not to make important decisions in stressful or exceptional situations, but to consider your options in a calm environment."

The correlation between delayed reward and success in later life was also shown in a special study that focused on testing children of mothers without college degrees. However, the correlation was weaker here than in the original studies.

Fonts (selection)

  • W. Mischel, Y. Shoda , ML Rodriguez: Delay of gratification in children. In: Science. 244, 1989, pp. 933-938.
  • W. Mischel, O. Ayduk: Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system: The dynamics of delay of gratification. In: RF Baumeister, KD Vohs (Ed.): Handbook of self-regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications. Guilford, New York 2004, pp. 99-129.
  • The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. Little Brown, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-316-23087-2 .
    • The Marshmallow Test: Willpower, Delayed Rewards and the Development of Personality , Siedler Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-641-11927-0 .

Prizes and awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Mischel, 88, Psychologist Famed for Marshmallow Test, Dies. Retrieved September 15, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Haggbloom, SJ, Warnick, R., Warnick, JE, Jones, VK, Yarbrough, GL, Russell, TM, ... Monte, E. (2002). The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Review of General Psychology, 6 (2), 139-152.
  3. ↑ Falter No. 38/2018: Walter Mischel (1930 - 2018), p. 46
  4. ↑ W. Mischel, Y. Shoda, ML Rodriguez: Delay of gratification in children. In: Science 244, 1989, pp. 933-938.
  5. ^ Y. Shoda, W. Mischel, PK Peake: Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies from Preschool Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions. In: Developmental Psychology 26, 1990, pp. 978-986. bingschool.stanford.edu (PDF).
  6. ^ Walter Mischel: The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. Little Brown, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-316-23087-2 . English: The Marshmallow Test: Willpower, Delayed Rewards and Personality Development. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-641-11927-0 .
  7. ↑ Tomasz Kurianowicz: Marshmallow test: take me! Review in FAZ, November 5, 2014 .
  8. ↑ TW Watts, GJ Duncan, H. Quan: Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. In: Psychological science. [Electronic publication before printing] May 2018, doi : 10.1177 / 0956797618761661 , PMID 29799765 , PDF .
  9. ^ Willpower between Vienna and Brooklyn on ORF of October 5, 2012, accessed on October 5, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Mischel, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American personality psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 2018
Place of death New York City