Perfect Little World(80)

He would never tell Dr. Kwon what had transpired in this room. He would tell her, in the morning, that the family had enthusiastically agreed that she should remain a part of their family. He would keep everyone together, whether they wanted it or not. He thought about the time, when the duration of the project had ended, when he would extend his arms and let all of his children wander into whatever came next. He thought of how difficult that moment would be, but perhaps, a darker part of him wondered, it wouldn’t be nearly as difficult as he thought. Perhaps, by the end of their time here, he would never want to see any of them again.

He carried the votes into his apartment and ripped them into confetti, the process taking far longer than he had expected, but he was fully committed to the action. He dumped the scraps of paper, a blizzard of paper, into the trash can. Then he walked into his bedroom, retrieved his dopp kit, and exorcised whatever demons he thought lingered inside him.


Dr. Grind placed a marshmallow on the table and Cap, sitting in a chair, watched it with great interest, as if it were a crystal ball that could tell him his future. “Now, Cap,” Dr. Grind said, gesturing toward the marshmallow, “you can eat this marshmallow if you would like. Or, if you wait fifteen minutes, I will give you another marshmallow. So you will have two.”

Cap nodded, understanding perfectly the terms of the experiment. “Now, I’m going to leave you alone, and I’ll come back in fifteen minutes.” Cap smiled and waved good-bye to Dr. Grind, who then stepped out of the room, into the observation room, where they could watch Cap through the one-way glass. Before Dr. Grind had even closed the door, Jill said, “He’s already eaten the fucking marshmallow.” Dr. Grind quickly turned toward the glass and looked as Cap chewed with great happiness, his face angelic. “Half a second,” Jill said, observing the timer.


The Stanford marshmallow experiment was as basic and fundamental as you could get with regard to child development. The idea, cooked up in the 1970s, was that a child would be offered the immediate gratification of a marshmallow. However, if they could wait for fifteen minutes without eating the marshmallow, they would be rewarded with a second. The study had found significant correlations between those who could delay their gratification and their success later in life. Simply put, the kids who couldn’t resist the immediate gratification of the first marshmallow trended lower in several categories than those who waited.

As the research fellows went through their research, with Dr. Grind serving as a mentor, they were now publishing articles in scholarly journals, developing data to support the foundational beliefs of The Infinite Family Project. Dr. Grind also wrote summarized examinations of these studies for publications like the New York Times and Time magazine and Parents magazine. In almost every study, the children were charting higher in many significant aspects than their peers outside the project, sometimes to such a degree that it wasn’t entirely clear that the project itself was responsible. So when the children were finally of the age to undertake the marshmallow experiment, none of the researchers had thought much of it with regard to the outcome. They had talked of which children would excel and which children might find it more difficult. The fellows had even set up a rather complicated chart on which they bet on the children, which Dr. Grind discouraged but did not abolish. Dr. Grind himself had pegged certain children to be more likely to excel at the experiment. So, it was very disorienting to realize, now having tested all of the ten children, that not a single one of them had resisted the impulse to eat the marshmallow immediately.

The first child, Gilberto, had said, when questioned later by Dr. Grind, that he really only wanted the one marshmallow and he didn’t think it would make sense to wait fifteen minutes for a marshmallow that he didn’t want. And so, even if the outcome had not been what they had suspected, the researchers all seemed to justify Gilberto’s actions as falling in line with mature, responsible logic. The experiment, they believed, was still sound.

However, Ally, the next child, had told him that she did not actually believe Dr. Grind would withhold the second marshmallow from her, even if she ate the first one before the time limit was up. She seemed genuinely mystified as to why he hadn’t already given her the second one, and Dr. Grind had to work hard to not go ahead and give it to her anyway. Jackie had said that, if she wanted another marshmallow later, she would just ask one of her parents and they would probably give it to her. The other children had said much the same thing, that if they truly wanted another marshmallow, no matter what they did, they would not be denied.

After the fifteen minutes had passed, Dr. Grind returned to the room and Cap smiled and said, “It was a good marshmallow!” Dr. Grind nodded, trying to keep the grimness out of his demeanor, and then asked Cap why he hadn’t waited for the second one.

“Because I really love marshmallows, and I really wanted to eat it,” he said, almost laughing.

“But, Cap, because you didn’t wait for the fifteen minutes, you won’t get a second one.”

Cap frowned. “What?” he said.

“You could have had two delicious marshmallows, but, because you didn’t wait, you only got one.”

“Could I try it again?” he asked.

Dr. Grind thought for a second. “Cap, if I put another marshmallow on the table and said you could have another one if you only waited, what would you do?”

“I would eat the marshmallow.”