Walter Mischel (; February 22, 1930 – September 12, 2018) was an Austrian-born American
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
specializing in
personality theory
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include:
* construction of a ...
and
social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
. He was the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. A ''
Review of General Psychology
''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for General Psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, th ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Mischel as the 25th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Early life
Mischel was born on February 22, 1930
in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
,
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
, to Salomon Mischel and the former Lola Leah Schreck. He was the brother of Theodore Mischel, who became an American philosopher.
When he was 8 years old his
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family fled with him to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
after the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
occupation in 1938.
He grew up in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
where he attended
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
and received his bachelor's degree (1951) and master's degree (1953). He continued his studies under
George Kelly and
Julian Rotter
Julian B. Rotter (October 22, 1916 – January 6, 2014) was an American psychologist known for developing social learning theory and research into locus of control. He was a faculty member at Ohio State University and then the University of Conn ...
at
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
, where he received his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in
clinical psychology
Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...
in 1956. He spent much of his career studying delayed gratification and life outcomes of those who were able to maintain self-control when studied.
Professional career
Mischel taught at the
University of Colorado
The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Co ...
from 1956 to 1958, at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
from 1958 to 1962, and at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
from 1962 to 1983. Since 1983, Mischel was in the Department of Psychology at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
.
Mischel was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
in 2004 and to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 1991. In 2007, Mischel was elected president of the
Association for Psychological Science
The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...
. Mischel's other honors include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
, the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Experimental Social Psychologists, the Distinguished Contributions to Personality Award of the Society of Social and Personality Psychologists, and the Distinguished Scientist Award of American Psychological Association's Division of Clinical Psychology. He was editor of ''
Psychological Review
''Psychological Review'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers psychological theory. It was established by James Mark Baldwin (Princeton University) and James McKeen Cattell (Columbia University) in 1894 as a publication vehi ...
'' and was president of the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
Division of Social and Personality Psychology and of the
Association for Research in Personality
The Association for Research in Personality (abbreviated ARP) is an American learned society dedicated to advancing research into personality. Its mission statement does not mention specific disciplines such as social psychology or policy research, ...
.
Mischel was the recipient of the 2011
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of ...
Grawemeyer Award
The Grawemeyer Awards () are five awards given annually by the University of Louisville. The prizes are presented to individuals in the fields of education, ideas improving world order, music composition, religion, and psychology. The religion awa ...
in Psychology for his studies in self-control.
Contributions to personality theory
In 1968, Mischel published the controversial book, ''Personality, and Assessment'', which created a paradigm crisis in personality psychology. The book touched upon the problem in trait assessment that was first identified by Gordon Allport in 1937. Mischel found that empirical studies often failed to support the fundamental traditional assumption of personality theory, that an individual's behavior with regard to an inferred trait construct (e.g. conscientiousness; sociability) remained highly consistent across diverse situations. Instead, Mischel cautioned that an individual's behavior was highly dependent upon situational cues, rather than expressed consistently across diverse situations that differed in meaning. Mischel maintained that behavior is shaped largely by the exigencies of a given situation and that the notion that individuals act in consistent ways across different situations, reflecting the influence of underlying personality traits, is a myth.
Situation and behaviour
Mischel made the case that the field of
personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include:
* construction of a c ...
was searching for consistency in the wrong places. Instead of treating situations as the noise or "error of measurement", Mischel's work proposed that by including the situation as it is perceived by the individual and by analyzing behavior in its situational context, the consistencies that characterize the individual would be found. He argued that these individual differences would not be expressed in consistent cross-situational behavior, but instead, he suggested that consistency would be found in distinctive but stable patterns of if-then, situation-behavior relations that form contextualized, psychologically meaningful "personality signatures" (e.g., "s/he does A when X, but does B when Y").
These signatures of personality have been in fact revealed in a large observational study of
social behavior
Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an ...
across multiple repeated situations over time. Contradicting the classic assumptions, the data showed that individuals who were similar in average levels of behavior, for example in their
aggression
Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual; although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reacti ...
, nevertheless differed predictably and dramatically in the types of situations in which they exhibited aggression. As predicted by Mischel, they were characterized by highly psychologically informative if-then behavioral signatures. Collectively, this work has allowed a new way to conceptualize and assess both the stability and variability of behavior that is produced by the underlying personality system and has opened a window into the dynamic processes within the system itself.
Self-control
In a second direction, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mischel pioneered work illuminating the ability to delay gratification and to exert self-control in the face of strong situational pressures and emotionally "hot" temptations. His studies with preschoolers in the late 1960s often referred to as "the
marshmallow experiment
The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a study on delayed gratification in 1972 led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University. In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two ...
", examined the processes and mental mechanisms that enable a young child to forgo immediate gratification and to wait instead for a larger desired but delayed reward. The test was simple: give the child an option between an immediate treat or more of a delayed treat. For example, the proctor would give the child an option to eat one marshmallow immediately or to wait ten minutes and receive not one, but two marshmallows to eat.
The test didn't have to be conducted with marshmallows specifically; it could be done with Oreo cookies, M&Ms, or other desirable treats. As Mischel followed up with the parents of the children who took the test years later, he found a staggering correlation between those kids who had difficulty delaying gratification and their outcomes in life as an adult.
For those kids who had trouble waiting for the delectable delight, they tended to have higher rates of obesity and below-average levels of academic achievement later in life.
Their counterparts who were able to wait longer for the treat had stark different outcomes down the road, including lower body mass index and higher standardized test scores.
Still a stark contrast appeared when studying children who were raised by parents below the poverty line compared with children whose parents were college-educated. A significantly larger portion of the low-income children ate the treat immediately conversely from the counterparts who waited.
Continuing research with these original participants has examined how preschool delay of gratification ability links to development over the life course and may predict a variety of important outcomes (e.g., SAT scores, social and cognitive competence, educational attainment, and drug use), and can have significant protective effects against a variety of potential vulnerabilities.
This work also opened a route to research on temporal discounting in
decision-making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...
, and most importantly into the mental mechanisms that enable cognitive and emotional
self-control
Self-control, an aspect of inhibitory control, is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses. As an executive function, it is a cognitive process that is necessary for regulating one's b ...
, thereby helping to demystify the concept of
willpower. While the data is clear about the outcomes of a child failing or passing the Marshmallow Test, what isn't clear is understanding why the subjects quickly consume the treat or wait for more. Walter Mischel conducted additional research and predicted that the Marshmallow Test can also be a test of trust.
Children who were raised by absent parents were less likely to pass possibly because they didn't trust the stranger when he or she said they would be given double the reward if they waited. They trusted their instincts and acted upon a certain thing.
In addition, Mischel believed that the children who wait have the inherent ability to reach their goals and hold positive expectations. This understanding is a hypothesis for why the outcomes later in life are so starkly different.
Media appearances
Mischel appeared on
The Colbert Report
''The Colbert Report'' ( ) is an American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by Stephen Colbert that aired four days a week on Comedy Central from October 17, 2005, to December 18, 2014, for 1,447 episodes. The show focuse ...
in September 2014 to discuss his studies shortly after the release of his first book meant for a general audience, ''The Marshmallow Test''. In October 2014, an extensive interview with him was published on the
PBS NewsHour
''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virg ...
"Making Sen$e" economics website, and in January 2015, he and his work were featured twice on the PBS NewsHour broadcast. On June 24, 2016, Mischel was interviewed for the Invisibilia Podcast "The Personality Myth" on
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
. He discussed the way that personality works and how it can change over time when a person is presented with new situational circumstances.
The Personality Myth
by Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel "National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
" June 24, 2016
Personal life
Mischel lived on Manhattan Island
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in New York City, and enjoyed painting and travel. He had three children: Linda Mischel, Rebecca Mischel, and Judy Mischel, and six grandchildren: David Elfman, Rachel Elfman, Lauren Eisner, Solomon Olshin, Stephen Eisner, and Benjamin Olshin. Mischel spoke several languages, including English and French, and spent time in Paris, France
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
on a regular basis and frequented Bend, Oregon
Bend is a city in and the county seat of Deschutes County, Oregon, United States. It is the principal city of the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area. Bend is Central Oregon's largest city, with a population of 99,178 at the time of the 2020 U.S ...
later in life. He died at his home in New York from pancreatic cancer on September 12, 2018.
Selected bibliography
Scientific publications
*Mischel, W. (1968). ''Personality and assessment''. New York: Wiley.
*Mischel, W. (1973). Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality. ''Psychological Review'', 80, 252–283.
*Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. ''Science'', 244, 933–938.
*Mischel, W. & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. ''Psychological Review'', 102, 246–268.
*Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. ''Psychological Review'', 106, 3–19.
*Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2004). "Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system: The dynamics of delay of gratification". In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), ''Handbook of self-regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications'' (pp. 99–129). New York: Guilford.
*Mischel, W. (2004). "Toward an integrative science of the person". ''Annual Review of Psychology
The ''Annual Review of Psychology'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes review articles about psychology. First published in 1950, its longest-serving editors have been Mark Rosenzweig (1969–1994) and Susan Fiske (2000– ...
'', 55, 1–22.
Autobiography
*Mischel, W. (2007). "Walter Mischel". In G. Lindzey & W. M. Runyan (Eds.), ''A History of Psychology in Autobiography'' (Vol. IX, pp. 229–267). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Popular press
* Mischel, W. (2014). ''The Marshmallow Test''. New York: Little, Brown.
See also
* Situationism
The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...
References
External links
Columbia University Department of Psychology: Walter Mischel
Don't! The secret of self-control
by Jonah Lehrer ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' May 18, 2009
Walter Mischel—The Marshmallow Test
"Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programming ...
" September 25, 2014
The Personality Myth
by Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel "National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
" June 24, 2016
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mischel, Walter
1930 births
2018 deaths
People from Vienna
Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss
Columbia University faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists
Harvard University faculty
Austrian Jews
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Ohio State University alumni
American social psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
21st-century American psychologists
Stanford University Department of Psychology faculty
University of Colorado faculty
Deaths from pancreatic cancer