Interesting idea that children who can delay gratification will be more successful than those who can't.It's a good talk, only 5 minutes long and contains very cutes kids so it's worth a quick watch. It would be interesting to know if the children who didn't eat the marshmallows had been taught at a very early age that patience is important or was their restraint an innate gift. Had strong parenting played a part?
I'm currently reading Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers' which looks at what makes people successful. More often than not strange patterns in success like this often have simple explanations. For example, the reason that most successful hockey players in Canada have their birthdays in January and February has nothing to do with horoscopes. It is simply because youth leagues in Canada organise kids by age, based on the calendar year. Those born in the first part of the year are naturally taller and stronger than those born later in the year and as a result tend to shine brightly catching the attention of coaches. What then happens is they are singled out as future stars and given extra coaching.