Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of timeI want to share with you some ideas about the secret power of time, in a very short time.Video: All right, start the clock please. 30 seconds studio. Keep it quiet please. Settle down. It's about time. End sequence. Take one. 15 seconds studio. 10, nine, eight, seven,six, five, four, three, two ...Philip Zimbardo: Let's tune into the conversation of the principals in Adam's temptation."Come on Adam, don't be so wishy-washy. Take a bite." "I did." "One bite, Adam. Don't abandon Eve." "I don't know, guys. I don't want to get in trouble." "Okay. One bite. What the hell?" (Laughter)Life is temptation. It's all about yielding, resisting, yes, no, now, later, impulsive, reflective,present focus and future focus. Promised virtues fall prey to the passions of the moment.Of teenage girls who pledged sexual abstinence and virginity until marriage -- thank you George Bush -- the majority, 60 percent, yielded to sexual temptations within one year. And most of them did so without using birth control. So much for promises.Now lets tempt four-year-olds, giving them a treat. They can have one marshmallow now. But if they wait until the experimenter comes back, they can have two. Of course it pays, if you like marshmallows, to wait. What happens is two-thirds of the kids give in to temptation. They cannot wait. The others, of course, wait. They resist the temptation. They delay the now for later.Walter Mischel, my colleague at Stanford, went back 14 years later, to try to discover what was different about those kids. There were enormous differences between kids who resistedand kids who yielded, in many ways. The kids who resisted scored 250 points higher on the SAT...
