Choosing Your Class

Does the ability to exercise self-control determine your class? Research suggests that children with higher socioeconomic status demonstrate more self-control. A researcher in cognitive science at Stanford asks if social classes diverge based on our ability to exercise self-control. The idea turns on the classic cookie experiment: children are given one cookie now, but told they can get two in the future if they just hold off eating the first one. Results from the experiment show children from higher classes are more likely to wait for the two cookies than their lower class counterparts.