Twito Louise, Israel Salomon, Simonson Itamar, Knafo-Noam Ariel
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jul 31;10:1649. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01649. eCollection 2019.
Delayed gratification is the ability to postpone an immediate gain in favor of greater and later reward. Although delayed gratification has been studied extensively, little is known about the motivation behind children's decisions. Since values are cognitive representations of individuals' motivations, which serve to guide behavior, we studied the relationship between children's values and delayed gratification. Two main distinct motivations overlapping with values may underlie this decision: conservation - the desire to reduce uncertainty and preserve the status quo, and self-enhancement - the desire to maximize resources and profit for the self. Accordingly, we hypothesized that conservation values would relate to children's preference to hold on to what is given as soon as possible, and that self-enhancement values would relate to children's preference for delaying gratification. Seven-year old children ( = 205) ranked their values with the Picture-Based Values Survey (Döring et al., 2010) as part of the Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins (LIST) (Avinun and Knafo, 2013). The children also played a decision-making animation game that included delayed gratification decisions. In support of our hypotheses, greater delayed gratification related negatively to conservation values, specifically to security and tradition, and related positively to self-enhancement values, especially power and achievement. This is one of the first demonstrations that children's values relate meaningfully to their behaviors.
延迟满足是一种为了更大且更晚的回报而推迟即时收获的能力。尽管延迟满足已得到广泛研究，但对于儿童做出相关决策背后的动机却知之甚少。由于价值观是个体动机的认知表征，可用于指导行为，因此我们研究了儿童价值观与延迟满足之间的关系。与价值观重叠的两种主要不同动机可能是这一决策的基础：守恒——减少不确定性和维持现状的愿望，以及自我提升——为自己最大化资源和利益的愿望。据此，我们假设守恒价值观会与儿童尽快保留已得到之物的偏好相关，而自我提升价值观会与儿童延迟满足的偏好相关。作为以色列双胞胎纵向研究（LIST）（阿维农和克纳福，2013年）的一部分，7岁儿童（ = 205）通过基于图片的价值观调查（多林等人，2010年）对他们的价值观进行了排序。这些儿童还玩了一个包含延迟满足决策的决策动画游戏。为支持我们的假设，更大程度的延迟满足与守恒价值观呈负相关，特别是与安全和传统价值观，与自我提升价值观呈正相关，尤其是与权力和成就价值观。这是首批表明儿童价值观与其行为存在有意义关联的例证之一。
