Chris Blattman

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Liberia post hoc

As I board the plane for Ethiopia, miscellaneous notes from Liberia.

Our search for an adult-sized marshmallow experiment continues to frustrate. A soda can be claimed by respondents any time during our 90 minute survey, or the 90 minute behavioral games and cognitive tests that follow. It sits in front of them, beckoning in the warm weather. If respondents wait to the end, they get two. We have tried it all: candies, biscuits, more soda, less soda, money. Everyone waits, even the ones who play impulsively and impatiently in the money games, puzzles, and tests. I am missing something obvious.

Our office manager is holding a celebration. I suggested to other staff we drop in. One of the Liberian researchers on staff dashes my hopes: “There’s no such thing as an African drop-in,” she replies, “only African stay-ins.”

We’ve set up each of our randomized control trials with a team of one to two full time Liberian qualitative researchers. Over two years we’ve discovered people with an incredible talent for observing, talking, confiding, and (increasingly) analysis. They get reams of information and insight unavailable to the foreigner. The data are voluminous. If the interventions work, we have a solid idea why. Another benefit: new questions and hypotheses to test quantitatively—some more interesting than the originals. And it’s a poor but respectable substitute for the dwindling time I have to spend in the field. Every research project should build this in.

The more projects I start, the less time I spend in the field, and the more time in the office, directing others how to run the programs and studies. This is not a model for my ideal research life. But quality rather than quantity proves difficult. The research ideas slap you in the face here. Academic marshmallows? It’s my own impulse control that needs checking.

8 Responses

  1. Q for Chris: Has there been a developed-world version of this? Or are you trying to do both developed->developing world, and child->adult conversions of the test? Maybe one-by-one you’ll have better luck?

  2. Two thoughts:
    – Kids’ sense of time isn’t quite as tight as adults – an hour is a lifetime for them. I have no idea how to map from a kid’s 90 minutes to adult time periods, but possibly it may be weeks or months (which would, of course be really tough in an experiment)
    – Adults may be better at picking up on the cues. Can you make the choice more subtle? Instead of a simple “1 now vs 2 later”, can you create a series of options over several hours?

  3. Agree with the other commenters, it might be better if they don’t do anything else but look at the soda. The kids’ strategy was often to purposely keep themselves busy to avoid eating the marshmallow. If you keep them busy yourself, self-control will probably be much easier. Maybe even more so for the impulsive types as they have to focus more for what they (hopefully) think is an important task (you might have to resort to making them “wait” for the results between tests to not give the nature of the experiment away).
    I would also consider not providing a can, but instead a glass and a jug, so they cannot take the soda home for their own (two?) children.

  4. My guess is that they wish to separate drinking and eating from the other survey and research activities you are doing. My experience has been that participants take interacting with Westerners very seriously and earnestly and might consider it inappropriate to drink or eat while you are gathering information. That wouldn’t explain money, but impulse control is easier with money than with a cold drink in the heat.

  5. Do you tell the respondents how long the survey will take (e.g. in the consent, the protocol for the games)? It think it would make a big difference if they knew.

  6. Here are my two cents. You’re acting on the premise that they, as Westerners, are consumerist. But based on my knowledge of people in northeastern Brazil, who live in the countryside, especially adults, their problem is not to be impulsive to consume, but resigned to what happens to them. What they lack is not self-control, but lack of proactivity. So, I would suggest reversing the test. Create a situation where they have to be pro-active to receive the reward.

  7. Have you tried leaving them alone in the room with their soda for about 15-20 minutes with nothing else to do but wait and look at it?

  8. Is it too comfortable in the test environment? Or are all the test subjects really Canadians-in-training?

    (Semi-serious follow-up: run the same test in the same (as possible) conditions at different latitudes and see if there really are “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”)

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