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My father-in-law, with whom I was very close, spent most of his life on the same working-class street in Barcelona’s El Clot neighborhood. Born in 1929, he saw Spain’s bloody civil war taking place literally in front of his house. His family experienced a lot of suffering. Some died; others spent years in jail or were forced into exile. He himself spent a year in a refugee camp, an experience that affected him for the rest of his life. Every time he wanted to make a point about society or culture, he always started with: “Well, during the civil war …”
One evening, a few months before he died, he read in his local paper an article of mine about unhappiness. “You have a lot of complicated theories,” he told me, “but the real reason people are unhappy is very simple.” I asked him to elaborate. “They don’t enjoy their dinner,” he responded. I asked him what he meant. “Well, during the civil war, we were always hungry,” he said. “But one day a year—Christmas—we got to eat whatever we wanted, and we were so happy. Today, people snack all day long, are never hungry, don’t enjoy their dinners, and aren’t happy—even on Christmas.”
That is a somewhat reductive hypothesis about global unhappiness, to be sure. But he was not wrong in his main contention: Happiness rises, paradoxically, when you do not get whatever you want, whenever you want it. Rather, well-being requires that you discipline your will and defer your gratifications. Understanding this and taking action to change your habits can make you a much happier person.
[Read: The politics of a long-dead dictator still haunt Spain]
In the behavioral sciences, the most famous study of deferred gratification is the so-called marshmallow experiment undertaken in 1970 by the psychologists Walter Mischel and Ebbe B. Ebbesen. This research project brought 32 young children into a laboratory, where they were offered either animal crackers or pretzel sticks (the marshmallow was an option that came only in later experiments). Before they were allowed to eat the treat, however, the researchers offered an upgrade: If the children could wait by themselves for 15 minutes without eating the snack, they would get a second one. All of the kids accepted the deal, and the researchers left the room and observed each child through a one-way mirror. Ten subjects succeeded in waiting and got the additional snack; 22 of them gave in to their desire and gobbled up the treat before the 15 minutes had elapsed.
Mischel and his colleagues were interested in the long-term differences between kids who were able to defer their gratification and those who weren’t, so they followed the participants as they grew up. In papers published decades later, the psychologists found that the two groups diverged significantly. For example, the ones who waited went on to get significantly higher scores on their SAT exams. Those who didn’t wait used drugs more frequently in adolescence and got less education. The researchers’ conclusion was clear: Being able to defer gratification leads to a more successful—and ultimately more satisfying—life.
As is the case for much research in behavioral science, these conclusions were later contested, by scholars who used larger, more diverse samples of kids and methods that carefully controlled for family background and cognitive ability. For example, one 2018 study concluded that being able to delay gratification has by itself only a weak effect on educational outcomes, and is insignificant in predicting anti-social behavior. Although these revised findings suggest that being able to say no to your immediate desires might not be a universal panacea, newer research has shown that a capacity to defer gratification does consistently deliver one important increase: in well-being. For example, scholars writing in 2014 in the Journal of Personality showed that people who score a high level of self-control enjoy significantly better mood and life satisfaction than those who lack such self-discipline.
One practical example of this happiness effect involves materialistic values and how people spend money: As I have previously written, borrowing money (for discretionary consumption) lowers happiness, whereas saving raises it. You might predict from that finding that people who see money as a sign of success would likely be savers who prefer to delay gratification. Yet on the contrary, two psychologists demonstrated in a 2017 study that people who regard money as the measure of success tend to be spenders: When they have money, they typically use it immediately to acquire things—because they identify having possessions as a source of happiness. The researchers found that these people were less happy than people who didn’t behave this way.
To what degree the ability to defer gratification is down to nature or conditioned by nurture is unclear, but what we do know—because neuroscientists have demonstrated it—is that those who postpone their pleasure exhibit different brain activity when facing temptation from those who want to get their jollies right away. One study, from 2011, showed that people good at delaying indulgence have more activity in the prefrontal cortex (indicating that executive decision-making is taking place) when doing so than people who give in to their desire more easily, who in turn have more activity in the ventral striatum (a region that processes reward). Suggestive also are animal studies that have shown how mice taught to delay a reward enjoy a smoother, more regulated dopamine release than mice without this skill.
[Read: Why rich kids are so good at the marshmallow test]
Although the evidence is mixed on the long-term implications of the marshmallow test, being able to defer gratification is clearly valuable for well-being. Even if some people may be naturally better at postponing rewards, we also have some evidence that the skill can be cultivated from an early age. If this is something you could work on, here are two ways to get started. They may appear contradictory, but done right, they in fact complement each other.
1. Think about the future.
A research-proven approach to improving your capacity for deferred gratification is to imagine yourself in the future. In 2011, a team of researchers interested in how to elicit saving behavior employed digital aging techniques and virtual reality to enable people to interact with elderly versions of themselves. They found that after doing so, the participants were more willing than other people to accept awards of money at a future date rather than immediately.
You can use this finding in creative ways. For example, if you are hankering for a portion of junk-calorie carbohydrates at 4 p.m., have a conversation with a 6 p.m. version of yourself who forwent the snack and is hungry for a good healthy dinner. Or say you are in college and have a big exam tomorrow but have just gotten invited to a party: Have a chat with the unhappy future you who took the exam after partying instead of studying.
2. Don’t think about the future.
Paradoxically, a second technique for delaying gratification is to stop thinking about the future, in the form of purposeful mindfulness, the practice of paying attention nonjudgmentally to the present moment. Scholars in 2018 undertook an experiment in which a group of participants were asked to complete a survey of their willingness to defer rewards. Half of the group were then given an exercise in mindfulness breathing, while the other half (the control group) watched a music video. Afterward, when both groups retook the survey, the mindfulness practitioners were significantly more likely than before to defer rewards (whereas the music-video watchers showed no change).
Despite any initial impression otherwise, this second result is not at odds with the first finding: Its conclusion is that being more conscious when you make decisions will lead you to optimize your choices. So you can bring the two injunctions together and combine them to best effect: Think clearly about what you’re doing right now, and then think clearly about how you will reflect on your action later.
So before you buy that sweater, think about how you are feeling at this moment. Do you really need this sweater, or are you just self-soothing with a bit of retail therapy? Next, imagine yourself looking at the sweater in two months’ time. Does it give you delight or remind you that you have to make a credit-card payment?
[Arthur C. Brooks: Four rules for identifying your life’s work]
My father-in-law was right that deferring gratification leads to greater happiness. The good news is that you don’t need to be in the middle of a civil war to make this skill worth cultivating. But I always wondered whether he was right in his specific example: Does snacking lower well-being by ruining your enjoyment of proper meals? I have been unable to find any studies of this precise curiosity, so I had to triangulate some related research findings to come to a convincing answer.
Researchers who were studying the eating behavior of children reported in 2017 in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior that kids enjoyed food more when they followed structured meal settings—such as eating at the same times each day and dining in a family setting. They also tended to be less fussy about what they were eating. This is broadly supportive of my father-in-law’s theory. And I certainly never saw him eat a snack.
What I did see, however, was his complete unwillingness to save money and a reckless openhandedness about spending it. And this negative example supported his theory even more—though in a sad way, as he constantly ducked creditors and struggled to meet his basic needs in old age. Perhaps the inability to save was also an effect of the privations of his 1930s childhood: If you never know whether you’ve got enough to get through the month, why save the money you have now? Even though he suffered as a result of his spendthrift ways, I took a valuable lesson from his example in this too.
So my seasonal advice: Go to your holiday dinner good and hungry. But don’t buy your holiday feast on credit.
