What Role Does Willpower Have? How important is willpower? In the modern day, willpower is not needed as much to succeed in today’s world, but it is important to have. Instead of taking a long time to write a letter, a simple text or email can be typed, or even said into a microphone. People don’t need to go back and fix mistakes because we have auto correct. Everything comes easy for us and we are used to happiness coming quick and easy. So is it important to preserve willpower? How does it play a role on financial issues? Should we teach this as a skill to future generations? In children, it is not as important to them to succeed, so this can be the easiest way to gauge an individual 's willpower. In the original and famous marshmallow experiment, Walter Mischel tested 600 children 's willpower with a number of options. A child would be presented with one marshmallow and be left alone in a room with it for five minutes. If they could wait the whole five minutes without eating it, they will be rewarded with a second marshmallow to eat. Or, the child could ring a bell in the the room and eat only one marshmallow sooner. In the end, not much children waited the entire five minutes. …show more content…
The findings were obvious: the children who ate the marshmallow early were more likely to have behavioral problems. Those who did not eat the marshmallow, interestingly, did not show these traits and succeeded in school. “The difference between a child who could only wait thirty seconds and a child who could wait fifteen minutes was the the high-delayer had an SAT-score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than the kid who couldn’t wait”(Source