Goal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self-regulation, which becomes the difference between life success and personal failure.
Psychologists
Walter Mischel
Austrian-born American psychologist (1930-2018) whose 1968 book Personality and Assessment triggered a paradigm crisis in personality theory by attacking the cross-situational consistency assumption. From the late 1960s his Stanford marshmallow studies turned the question of delayed gratification into one of the most cited research programs in psychology. With Yuichi Shoda he later built the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) and with Janet Metcalfe the hot/cool framework of self-regulation. He was ranked 25th most cited psychologist of the 20th century in a 2002 survey and won the Grawemeyer Award in 2011. The 2018 Watts et al. replication, however, showed that family background largely explains the long-term effects originally attributed to delay ability, prompting a major reinterpretation of his legacy.
View this figure's profile
Walter Mischel's Other Quotes
Behavior is shaped largely by the exigencies of a given situation, and the notion that individuals act in consistent ways across different situations, reflecting the influence of underlying personality traits, is a myth.
Consistencies will be found in distinctive but stable patterns of if-then, situation-behavior relations that form contextualized, psychologically meaningful personality signatures.
The cool system enables future-oriented decisions; the hot system makes them difficult.
Willpower is a cognitive skill that can be taught, not a fixed trait you either have or do not have.