essay on instant gratification

The Real Issue With Instant Gratification

How quick-fix thinking creates problems in the modern world..

Posted September 14, 2019 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

The term “instant gratification” has become a fixture in the modern lexicon. Examples are everywhere. Our food, entertainment, online shopping, and even dating have been engineered to make it incredibly easy for us to obtain whatever we want in increasingly short order.

Having our desires quickly met isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But as it pertains to the spread of quick-fix solutions in the digital age, there are several reasons why certain instant gratification-fueled, impulsive behaviors may be detracting from our health and quality of life. To start, we need to appreciate how they influence our brains.

Our brains are constantly changing in response to what we do and the things we pay attention to. For example, each time we impulsively eat an unhealthy snack or buy something online, our brain pathways for those actions are reinforced and strengthened, making it easier to fall into the same patterns the next time around and harder to break the cycle.

This is worthy of consideration because many of the activities that promote instant gratification are linked to unhealthy behaviors. Over time, the ability to quickly satisfy a desire for low-quality, disease-inducing foods takes a real toll on our bodies. The unrestrained purchasing of whatever online good piques our interest creates a major burden on our credit card statement, and our constant drive to check in on social media , even while spending time with friends and family, lowers the quality of our in-person interactions.

Additionally, as we continue our quest for rewarding quick fixes, we start to experience a dopamine surge in our brains long before we actually experience any reward, and the craving associated with dopamine release hits us early, too. So now, just driving by your favorite fast-food restaurant or seeing your phone nearby is enough to induce powerful cravings, making it more challenging to break an unhealthy habit.

In the bigger picture, the more we overvalue instant gratification, the more likely we are to be distracted from longer-term, more meaningful goals . The constant checking of our social accounts or our exposure to auto-play features on streaming TV makes it difficult to maintain focus on actions that create long-term success and happiness .

In summary, over-reliance on instant gratification behaviors can create problems by changing our brains, distracting us from more meaningful pursuits, and leading to destructive financial, social, and health outcomes. And while this should not be taken to mean that we can’t enjoy the conveniences of the modern world, we need to be more conscious about the context, frequency, and consequences of this type of decision-making .

Austin Perlmutter, M.D. , is a board-certified internal medicine physician and the co-author of Brain Wash .

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What’s So Bad About Instant Gratification?

The internet is making us impatient. But is that actually such a bad thing? Our tech columnist takes a look.

The internet is making us impatient . Add that to the long list of ways that our use of technology is supposedly impoverishing the human character, making us stupid , distracted and socially disconnected .

Here’s how the argument goes: in this bold new world of instant gratification, we never have to wait for anything.  Want to read the book you just heard about? Order it on your Kindle and start reading within minutes. Want to watch the movie your office-mates were gossiping about around the water cooler? Hit the sofa when you get home, and fire up Netflix. Getting lonely with your book or movie? Just launch Tinder and start swiping right until someone shows up at your door.

And that’s before we even get to the ever-expanding range of on-demand products and services that are available in big cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Thanks to services like Instacart, Amazon Prime Now, and TaskRabbit, you can get just about any product or service delivered to your door within minutes.

While all that instant gratification may be convenient, we are warned that it’s ruining a long-standing human virtue: the ability to wait. Well, it’s not waiting itself that’s a virtue; the virtue is self-control, and your ability to wait is a sign of just how much self-control you have.

The Virtues of Delayed Gratification

It all goes back to the marshmallow test , the heart of a legendary study in childhood self-control. Back in the 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel offered 4-year-old children the chance to eat one marshmallow…or alternately, to wait and get two. A later follow-up study found that the kids who waited for TWO entire marshmallows grew up to be adults with greater self-control, as Mischel et. al describe :

those who had waited longer in this situation at 4 years of age were described more than 10 years later by their parents as adolescents who were more academically and socially competent than their peers and more able to cope with frustration and resist temptation.

From this core insight flowed an enormous body of literature describing the foundational value of self-control to life outcomes. It turns out that the ability to wait for things is a hugely important psychological resource: people who lack the self-control to wait for something they want run into real trouble on all sorts of fronts. As Angela  Duckworth reports , self-control predicts…

income, savings behavior, financial security, occupational prestige, physical and mental health, substance use, and (lack of) criminal convictions, among other outcomes, in adulthood. Remarkably, the predictive power of self-control is comparable to that of either general intelligence or family socioeconomic status.

It’s this far-reaching impact of self-control that has led psychologists, educators, policy-makers, and parents to emphasize cultivating self-control at a young age. Michael Presley , for example, reviewed the effectiveness of self-verbalization (telling yourself that waiting is good), external verbalization (being told to wait) and affect cues (being told to think fun thoughts) as strategies for increasing children’s resistance to temptation. But self-control isn’t just good for kids.  Abdullah J.  Sultan et al. show that self-control exercises can even be effective with adults, reducing impulse buying.

Waiting for Prune Juice

If self-control is such a powerful resource—and one that is amenable to conscious development—no wonder we are leery of technologies that render it irrelevant, or worse yet, undermine our carefully practiced ability to wait for gratification. You can shower your kid (or yourself) with mindfulness training and withheld marshmallows, but as long as everything from ice cream to marijuana is just one click away, you’re fighting an uphill battle for self-control.

Buried amid the literature extolling the character-building value of deferred gratification, however, are a few nuggets that give us hope for the human spirit in the always-on, always-now internet age. Of particular interest: a 2004 study by Stephen M. Nowlis, Naomi Mandel and Deborah Brown McCabe on The Effect of a Delay between Choice and Consumption on Consumption Enjoyment .

Nowlis et al. observe that the vast majority of studies on deferred gratification assume that we are waiting for something we are actually looking forward to. But let’s be honest: not everything we get online is as deliriously enjoyable as a marshmallow. A lot of the time, what the Internet delivers is, at best, ho-hum. Your weekly re-supply of toilet paper from Amazon. That sales strategy book your boss insists everyone in the company has to read. The Gilmore Girls reboot .

And as Nowlis et al. point out, the subjective experience of a delay works totally differently when you’re waiting for something you’re not especially eager to enjoy. When people are waiting for something they really like, the delay in gratification increases their subjective enjoyment of their ultimate reward; when they’re waiting for something less intrinsically enjoyable, the delay imposes all the aggravation of waiting without the ultimate payoff.

Nowlis et al. provide a concrete example: “participants who had to wait for the chocolate enjoyed it more than those who did not have to wait” whereas “participants who had to wait to drink the prune juice liked it less than those who did not have to wait.”

When it comes to online gratification, we’re dealing with prune juice a lot more often than we’re dealing with chocolate. Sure, waiting for chocolate may ennoble the human spirit—and as Nowlis and others show, that waiting may actually increase our enjoyment of whatever we’ve been waiting for.

But a lot of the time, online technology just ensures the prompt arrival of our prune juice. We’re getting the efficiency gains of reduced wait times, without teaching our brains that good things come to those who fail to wait.

The Potential Cons of Self-Control

Nor is it obvious that instant gratification of our baser urges—if we can consider chocolate a “base urge”—is all that bad for us, anyhow. In the wake of Mischel’s research, a lively debate has sprung up over whether self-control is really such a good thing. As Alfie Kohn writes , quoting psychologist Jack Block:

It’s not just that self-control isn’t always good; it’s that a lack of self-control isn’t always bad because it may “provide the basis for spontaneity, flexibility, expressions of interpersonal warmth, openness to experience, and creative recognitions.”…What counts is the capacity to choose whether and when to persevere, to control oneself, to follow the rules rather than the simple tendency to do these things in every situation. This, rather than self-discipline or self-control, per se, is what children would benefit from developing. But such a formulation is very different from the uncritical celebration of self-discipline that we find in the field of education and throughout our culture.

The closer we look at research on the relationship between self-control and delay of gratification, the less likely it seems that the internet is eroding some core human virtue. Yes, self-control correlates with a wide range of positive outcomes, but it may come at the price of spontaneity and creativity. And it’s far from obvious that instant gratification is the enemy of self-control, anyhow: much depends on whether we’re gratifying needs or pleasures, and on whether delay is a function of self-control or simply slow delivery.

If there’s any obvious story here about our compulsion for instant gratification, it’s in our desire for quick, easy answers about the impact of the internet itself. We love causal stories about how the internet is having this or that monolithic impact on our characters—particularly if the causal story vindicates the desire to avoid learning new software and instead curl up with a hardbound, ink-on-paper book .

It’s far less satisfying to hear that the internet’s effects on our character are ambiguous, contingent, or even variable based on how we use it. Because that puts the burden back on us: the burden to make good choices about what we do online, guided by the kind of character we want to cultivate.

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What Is Instant Gratification? (Definition & Examples)

Working on a project? Writing a paper?

Putting away that load of laundry that’s been in the dryer for two days?

If so, you’re in good company. We all find ourselves distracted from meeting more long-term goals by more enjoyable short-term activities. Each of us likely struggles with these urges to procrastinate every day—with varying degrees of success.

Why is it so hard to stay the course on our long-term projects, even when we are certain that the advantages of sticking to it will far outweigh the more immediate benefits of putting them off?

The answer is instant gratification.

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This Article Contains

What is the meaning of instant or immediate gratification, instant gratification theory in psychology, 6 examples of instant gratification, how to overcome an instant gratification bias, tim urban’s instant gratification monkey (the instant gratification monkey and why procrastinators procrastinate), instant gratification and its effects on relationships, instant gratification’s effect on society, “instant gratification takes too long” – 13 quotes, a take-home message, frequently asked questions.

Instant (or immediate) gratification is a term that refers to the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit in order to obtain a less rewarding but more immediate benefit. When you have a desire for something pleasurable—be it food, entertainment, or sex—you rarely think thoughts like, “My stomach is rumbling and I would love to have that delicious dish, but I’d rather wait another hour.”

It’s a natural human urge to want good things and to want them NOW. It has almost certainly provided an evolutionary advantage for humans and their ancestors, as life for pre-modern humans hinged on decisions made and actions taken in the immediate far more than those intended for long-term gain.

It’s all well and good to plan for the future, but actions that are taken to benefit you in the here and now are much more advantageous when you’re being stalked by a fierce predator or offered the opportunity to eat your fill in a time when starvation was a much bigger concern than obesity.

The flip side of instant gratification is delayed gratification, or the decision to put off satisfying your desire in order to gain an even better reward or benefit in the future. It’s easy to see how delayed gratification is generally the wiser behavior, but we still struggle on a daily basis with the temptation to give in to our immediate desires. Why is it so difficult to choose delayed over instant gratification?

At the heart of instant gratification is one of the most basic drives inherent in humans—the tendency to see pleasure and avoid pain. This tendency is known as the pleasure principle.

The term was first used by Sigmund Freud to describe the role of the “id,” his proposed component of the unconscious mind that is driven purely by baser instincts (Good Therapy, 2015). Although Freud’s conceptualization of the human mind has largely been relegated to the “interesting idea, but it doesn’t really pan out” category of psychological theories, the pleasure principle was one of his more enduring propositions.

It’s clear that humans are, to at least some extent, driven by the desire to experience pleasure.

You could even argue that self-defeating behavior that seems to bring no immediate benefits is in line with the pleasure principle—for example, a person who frequently starts fights with his spouse may seem to be getting no benefit from his actions, but perhaps the apology or make-up period after the fight has passed outweighs the short-term discomfort of the argument (Good Therapy, 2015).

However you slice it, the lure of short-term pleasure is a tough temptation to avoid. Psychologist Shahram Heshmat outlines 10 reasons why it is so difficult to sidestep this urge (2016):

• A desire to avoid delay: it’s uncomfortable to engage in self-denial, and all of our instincts are to seize any opportunity for pleasure as it comes.
• Uncertainty: generally, we are born with nearly infinite certainty and trust in others, but over time we learn to be less sure of the reliability of others and of our future; this uncertainty can cause us to value the less beneficial but certain-and-immediate over the more beneficial uncertain-and-long-term.
• Age: as you have likely already noted, younger people have a tendency to be more impulsive, while older people with more life experience are better able to delay and temper their urges.
• Imagination : choosing delayed gratification requires the ability to envision your desired future if you forego your current desire; if you cannot paint a vivid picture of your future, you have little motivation to plan for it.
• Cognitive capacity: higher intelligence is linked to a more forward-thinking perspective; those who are born with more innate intelligence have a tendency to see the benefits of delayed gratification and act in accordance.
• Poverty: even when we see the wisdom in delaying gratification, poverty can make the decision complicated and even more difficult; if you have an immediate, basic need that is begging to be met (e.g., food, shelter), it’s unlikely you will choose to forego that need in order to receive any future benefit.
• Impulsiveness: some of us are simply more impulsive or spontaneous than others, which makes delaying gratification that much more difficult; this trait is associated with problems like substance abuse and obesity.
• Emotion regulation: individual differences in emotion regulation also impact our tendency towards instant vs. delayed gratification ; emotional distress makes us lean towards choices that will immediately improve our mood, and those who have developed emotion regulation problems are especially at risk.
• Mood: even those with healthy emotion regulation can be led astray by their current mood; we all experience bad moods, boredom, and impatience—all of which serve to make immediate desires that much more seductive.
• Anticipation: finally, the experience of anticipation can influence our decisions to delay gratification or seek it immediately in either direction; humans generally like to anticipate positive things and dislike the anticipation of negative things, which can lead to decisions to put things off or to engage in them as quickly as possible to seek pleasure or avoid discomfort.

There are so many examples of instant gratification that it might seem easier to list examples of delayed gratification! However, humans engage in delayed gratification more often than you might think.

After all, if everyone pursued instant gratification all the time, would anyone actually make the trek into work early in the morning unless they absolutely loved their job?

Some particularly salient examples of instant gratification that you can likely spot around you include:

• The urge to indulge in a high-calorie treat instead of a snack that will contribute to good health.
• The desire to hit snooze instead of getting up early to exercise.
• The temptation to go out for drinks with your friends instead of finishing a paper or studying for an exam.
• The temptation to go out for drinks with your friends instead of getting a good night’s sleep on a work night (this is one temptation that crosses generational bounds!).
• The desire to buy a new car that will require a high-interest loan instead of waiting until you have saved enough money to buy it without taking a loan.
• The urge to spend all your time with a new beau instead of working towards your long-term goals.

You have probably noticed that at least one or two of these examples apply to you. Don’t worry—a little instant gratification now and then won’t hurt! If you find yourself constantly choosing the immediate over the long-term, however, you might be struggling with an instant gratification bias. Read on to learn how to address this bias.

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I won’t sugarcoat it (pun intended)—saying no to immediate gratification is no easy feat. If it was, we would all be trim, healthy, and have a reasonable amount of money in our savings account.

However, there are some things you can do to get better at avoiding the temptation to give in to instant gratification, including:

• Empathize with your future self. Before making a decision between instant and delayed gratification, take a moment to think about your future mental state—if you opt for instant gratification, how will the future you feel? Will she be happy you made this decision the way you did, or will she wish you had opted for delayed gratification?
• Precommitment. One of the best ways to protect yourself from the temptation of instant gratification is to make some decisions beforehand. If you can set some of your most important decisions in stone now, you will be less likely to change your mind or go through the hassle of backtracking and undoing your preparations when you come face to face with the decision.
• Break down big goals into small, manageable chunks. Big goals are fun set and can be motivating, but they can also seem overwhelming or far off. When you must decide between instant, easy gratification and delaying gratification in the attempt to meet a big, distant goal, it’s hard to stick to your long-term goa l. Breaking these big goals into smaller pieces with rewards after each step makes you more committed and more likely to make the best decisions (Mani, 2017).

When you give your future self some consideration, make important decisions ahead of time, and split your big goals up into smaller, more manageable goals, you will find it much easier to say no to immediate temptations.

If you haven’t happened upon Tim Urban’s blog Wait But Why, you’re in for a treat! He explores interesting and impactful topics at a depth that is unseen in the blogosphere.

His ability to explain complex ideas in a simple and straightforward manner is exceptional, and the drawings that accompany his blogs are nothing if not endearing.

One of his best pieces (in this author’s humble opinion) is “Why Procrastinators Procrastinate,” in which he introduces us to the Instant Gratification Monkey.

I highly recommend reading the entire piece (which you can find here ), but I’ll outline the gist of this naughty monkey if you don’t have the time to invest in Urban’s long but worthwhile blog post right now.

The Instant Gratification Monkey is a troublesome creature who lives in the brain of procrastinators and constantly grapples with the much wiser tenant of the brain (the Rational Decision-Maker) for control—and frequently wins. The problem is that this monkey is truly terrible at making decisions.

I’ll let Urban tell you why he’s so bad at decision-making:

“The fact is, the Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions—he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment. He doesn’t understand the Rational Decision-Maker any better than the Rational Decision-Maker understands him—why would we continue doing this jog, he thinks, when we could stop, which would feel better. Why would we practice that instrument when it’s not fun? Why would we ever use a computer for work when the internet is sitting right there waiting to be played with? He thinks humans are insane”

(Urban, 2013).

In procrastinators, the monkey is bigger, stronger, and louder than in those steadfast people who embody patience and wisdom. The monkey has only one natural enemy in the procrastinator’s brain: the Panic Monster. The Panic Monster shows up when deadlines are approaching and only immediate and extreme effort can salvage the situation.

Many Instant Gratification Monkeys run for the hills when the Panic Monster appears (although some are unaffected even then), and the procrastinator is finally able to get some things done.

While this might seem like a good thing—after all, at least something gets done—it’s a really bad strategy for the long-term. Here’s why it’s a really bad strategy:

• It’s unpleasant for the procrastinator, who could enjoy some well-deserved rewards after dedicated and consistent effort instead of guilty pleasure and last-minute panic.
• The procrastinator will eventually fall prey to underachieving and fail to meet his goals, which keeps him from reaching his full potential and is likely to result in guilt, regret, and self-esteem issues.
• The procrastinator may get the “must-do” things done, but he will rarely if ever, get the “want-to-do” things done; anything that does not have a strict deadline that sets off the Panic Monster’s alarm bells will never become a priority (Urban, 2013).

To hear more from Urban on the immediate allure and eventual disappointment of procrastination, check out his TED Talk here:

“We’re becoming impatient and lazy and we’re allowing this to shape our approach to our relationships. But successful relationships aren’t handed over on a plate, or downloaded at the click of a button, or ours in twenty-four hours for just £9.99 extra. Relationships are up there with food, water, clothing and shelter and you can’t just buy them or trade them in for an upgrade.”

It will not come as a surprise to you to learn that instant gratification can have a markedly negative impact on relationships. When we are consumed with our desire for immediate pleasure or satisfaction, we rarely make decisions that benefit our long-term future with our partner.

Whether these decisions are more innocuous, like putting off something you promised your partner you would do to binge a new show on Netflix, or more serious, like satisfying a desire to sleep with someone who is not your partner, instant gratification is not part of the standard recipe for a happy and healthy relationship.

How does instant gratification harm relationships? Laura Brown from Meet Mindful explains:

• Relationships must be respected as organic, living creations that develop and grow at their own pace; people are also on their own unique path that may result in a different pace than their partner’s. The desire to get the relationship you want right now or force a commitment in a relationship that is simply not mature enough yet is a great way to ensure that the relationship fails.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate! We all know communication is important, but the quality of communication is even more important than the quantity. It might feel good to shoot off an angry text or discuss what seems like an urgent issue right now, regardless of you and your partner’s current emotional state, but these actions can be extremely detrimental. High-quality, face-to-face communication beats out 160-character messages and taking the time to explore your feelings and reflect beats blurting out the first thing that pops into your head.
• Not every relationship SHOULD evolve, meaning that not all relationships will last ‘til-death-do-us-part, and that’s okay! It might feel extremely important to you to push your relationship to the next level—or to whatever level you desire—but forcing a relationship into a stage or a mold that doesn’t fit will only end in pain. Sometimes the best decision is to let a relationship go, even if it seems unbearably painful in the moment.
• Patience is a virtue . There’s a reason that on-the-fly marriages in Las Vegas are less likely to last than those between two long-term partners who have planned their future together: it takes time to get to know your partner, to get to know yourself, and to create a healthy, nurturing relationship. The poets and romantic comedies may push the idea of love at first sight, but it simply doesn’t exist; you must actually know someone to truly love them (although newborns have a unique tendency to capture our hearts pretty quickly). If you don’t spend the time and put in the effort to build a strong foundation, your relationship is at risk of folding at the slightest breeze (Brown, n.d.).

Aside from the impacts on our personal lives when we give in to instant gratification’s seduction, there are society-wide impacts as well. We are undoubtedly becoming a society that is accustomed to getting what we want when we want it, and there is a big reason for this trend: technology and social media.

What Role Does Technology and Social Media Play?

“Technology has eliminated the basement darkroom and the whole notion of photography as an intense labor of love for obsessives and replaced them with a sense of immediacy and instant gratification.”

 Joe McNally

Although instant gratification has been a struggle for humans for a long time, it is undoubtedly harder than it used to be to delay gratification.

The biggest contributor to this increase in difficulty is modern technology and social media. When you have, essentially, the world at your fingertips, it’s extremely challenging to consciously choose delayed gratification over instant. In an age where Amazon has accustomed us to one-day delivery and Netflix and Hulu have gotten us hooked on instant streaming, it seems unthinkable to wait.

This relationship between instant gratification and technology is a two-way street: the more we are offered instant gratification through our technology, the more we come to expect it, and the more habituated we become to getting what we want right now, the more pressure there is on companies to fulfill this urge.

Emma Taubenfeld of Pace University outlines some of the effects of this interplay with salient examples:

• DVRs eliminate the need to wait through commercials to get back to your show or movie.
• Disney parks offer fast passes that allow you to skip the wait and jump to the front of the line—for a fee.
• Walmart and eBay are offering progressively faster shipping to compete with Amazon.
• Internet providers are constantly upgrading the speed of their connections to compete with other providers (2017).

Perhaps the biggest influence on our gratification habits comes from social media. Not only can we find out in an instant what all of our friends are up to or share the picture we snapped just moments ago, we can meet new people in seconds as well.

Dating apps like Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, and OkCupid offer the opportunity to connect with literally millions of people within seconds, and to filter them by dozens of specifications with a delay of only a minute or two.

While there are certainly positive outcomes from our new constantly-connected world, there are negative effects as well. It’s not a stretch to say that people are simply much less patient than they used to be.

Research from the University of Amherst found that video stream quality has a shocking impact on viewer behavior: if a video takes more than two seconds to load, would-be viewers start melting away, and each additional second of load time causes an additional 5.8% of people to give up and move on to something else (Krishnan & Sitaraman, 2013).

This is astounding when you stop to think about it. A delay of only two seconds is enough to make many of us give up on discovering something new, learning something we need to know, or even being entertained!

In a study on a similar topic, the Nielsen Norman Group found that most people stay on a web page long enough to read only about a fifth of the text that it contains (Nielsen, 2008). The average web page in the study contained 593 words, so visitors generally read only about 120 words on a typical visit.

Data from this study also showed that for 100 additional words on a page, visitors will spend only 4.4 seconds more before moving on to a new page. Depending on reading speed, that translates to around 18 words.

Think about that—when you add text to a page, you can only expect visitors to read about 18% of it! Although this certainly points to a tendency towards instant gratification (i.e., visitors find what they need and get out as soon as possible, or they give up because it takes too long), it may also be a sign that internet users are getting better at scanning pages and finding the information they are looking for.

However, with the exponential growth of false information online, even this silver lining has its own cloud—with so little time spent on gathering information, how could anyone have time to verify what they read? It’s all well and good to quickly find what you need, but how certain can you be that it is accurate when you spend mere seconds scanning the page?

As we become more dependent on the internet, and less patient with our time, it’s hard to see a future in which the prevalence of false information becomes less of a problem. If the past decade has been any indication, we can only expect more inaccuracy and less patience!

Are Millennials the Instant Gratification Generation?

“Everyone wants instant gratification: you have to have everything your parents had right away.”

Jim Flaherty

With such findings on instant gratification and technology, it’s easy to see how millennials got their reputation as the “instant gratification generation.” Millennials—the generation generally agreed to be those born in the 1980s and early 1990s—grew up with much more advanced technology than any previous generation.

They didn’t all have cell phones in their tweens, but they likely came of age with a connection to the internet that facilitated instant (or near instant, if you had dial-up) messaging.

Millennials get a lot of flak for their tendency towards instant gratification but ask a millennial about instant gratification and you might get an answer about how much longer this generation is waiting to get married, have children, buy a house, or dig out of student debt.

To be sure, millennials don’t get everything they want on demand—and are actually more patient when it comes to certain things—but they are certainly accustomed to receiving entertainment and communication with minimal delay.

Perhaps the question of whether millennials are the generation of instant gratification is the wrong question to ask; the right question might be about how the notion of instant gratification changes over time.

If you’re a member of the Baby Boomer generation, you probably agree that with the assertion about millennials and instant gratification, but take a moment to think back to your parents and grandparents’ generations: did they grow up with a telephone in the kitchen or fast, reliable, and (relatively) inexpensive automobile in the garage?

Traditionalists and earlier generations likely thought their children and grandchildren were spoiled by instant gratification as well; they could speak with anyone, nearly anywhere in the world, at the drop of a dime! The definition of the “instant gratification generation” is relative, such that whatever generation you were born into seems normal to you, while younger generations likely seem spoiled and entitled to immediate satisfaction.

Or perhaps millennials truly are spoiled and entitled to immediate satisfaction—you may want to take my millennial ideas with a grain of salt.

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Fans of the late Carrie Fisher will recognize her quote above: “Instant gratification takes too long.”

Meryl Streep had a similar quote: “Instant gratification is not soon enough.”

These humorous takes on instant gratification hold a kernel of truth to them—as we get more and more accustomed to quick satisfaction, we will only want quicker satisfaction. Avoiding the instant gratification trap requires delaying gratification, sometimes to gain even better benefits later, and sometimes just to remind us that we will survive the wait.

Here’s some other takes on instant gratification that you might find funny, insightful, or inspiring—and maybe just a few that validate the feel-good rush instant gratification can bring!

“What about getting up after five hours of sleep?’ ‘Oh, that’s morning guy’s problem. That’s not my problem—I’m night guy! I stay up as late as I want.”

Jerry Seinfeld

“In a world where people are hungry for quick fixes and sound bites, for instant gratification, there’s no patience for the long, slow rebuilding process: implementing after-school programs, hiring more community workers to act as mentors, adding more job training programs in marginalized areas.”

“As we get past our superficial material wants and instant gratification we connect to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to others, and the universe.”

Judith Wright

“We live in a quick-fix society where we need instant gratification for everything. Too fat? Get lipo-sucked. Stringy hair? Glue on extensions. Wrinkles and lines? Head to the beauty shop for a pot of the latest miracle skin stuff. It’s all a beautiful £1 billion con foisted upon insecure women by canny cosmetic conglomerates.”

Joan Collins

“I don’t think patience is something that any of us grow up with in a large dose. It’s a world of instant gratification.”

“We’re used to the characteristics of social media—participation, connection, instant gratification—and when school doesn’t offer the same, it’s easy to tune out.”

Adora Svitak

“I think it’s kind of nice, in this day and age of instant gratification, that you have to wait for something.”

Julian Ovenden

“Working is not instantly rewarding. It’s a long process, and it’s much easier to just feed whatever dopamine cycles exist in your brain in instant gratification ways. I get it; I do.”

Greta Gerwig

“The phenomena of taking photos and sharing them isn’t new, but with Instagram being mobile, both have become cheaper and faster, producing the instant gratification of knowing how our shots look in our palms.”

“We live in a time where there’s a required instant gratification from audiences. That’s a fun challenge in terms of putting together this teaser, picking and choosing how much you’re actually giving away.”

“We are often too late with our brilliance. We are on time delay. The only instant gratification comes in the form of potato chips. The rest will find us by surprise somewhere down the road maybe as we sleep and dream of other things.”

Richard Schiff

The take-home message here is the same one you will find when you ask your parents or grandparents for advice, or the suggestion you find when clicking on nearly any link that pops up in response to Googling “instant gratification”—it’s important to learn how to put off instant gratification.

You don’t always need to say no to things that make you feel good. Giving yourself a break once in a while is important, as is treating yourself to a reward after hard work. However, these occasional treats are much more valuable when you have made delayed gratification a habit.

If that is your goal, read our post on delayed gratification exercises .

In addition, use the tips outlined earlier to build your capacity for delaying gratification—you will thank yourself later!

What do you think about this topic? Am I biased towards my generation, and missing the obvious signs that millennials are indeed the generation of instant gratification? How do you resist the urge to put off what you need to get done? Let us know in the comments section!

Thanks for reading—now get back to work!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free .

The opposite of instant gratification is delayed gratification, which means postponing immediate rewards to the future.

Not being able to regulate impulses can make you lazy. In particular, if constantly giving in to your impulses prevents you from taking care of your responsibilities and encourages you to slack.

Research suggests that low self-control is correlated with loneliness and depression (Özdemir et al., 2014).

One of the biggest contributors to instant gratification is social media. According to research by Donnelly and Kuss (2016), instant gratification through social media use can lead to addiction which was shown to predict depression in users of social networks.

• Brown, L. (n.d.). How instant gratification is ruining dating. Meet Mindful: Dating & Relationships. Retrieved from https://www.meetmindful.com/instant-gratification/#
• Dawd, A. M. (2017). Delay of Gratification: Predictors and Measurement Issues.  Acta Psychopathologica ,  3 , 1-7.
• Donnelly, E., & Kuss, D. J. (2016). Depression among users of social networking sites (SNSs): The role of SNS addiction and increased usage.  Journal of Addiction and Preventive Medicine ,  1 (2), 107.
• Good Therapy. (2015). Pleasure principle. GoodTherapy PsychPedia . Retrieved from https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/pleasure-principle
• Heshmat, S. (2016). 10 reasons we rush for immediate gratification. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201606/10-reasons-we-rush-immediate-gratification
• Hutchinson, G. T., Patock-Peckham, J. A., Cheong, J., & Nagoshi, C. T. (1998). Irrational beliefs and behavioral misregulation in the role of alcohol abuse among college students.  Journal of rational-emotive and cognitive-behavior therapy ,  16 , 61-74.
• Krishnan, S. S., & Sitaraman, R. K. (2013). Video stream quality impacts viewer behavior: Inferring causality using quasi-experimental designs. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 21, 2001-2014.
• Mani, L. (2017). Hyperbolic discounting: Why you make terrible life choices. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/behavior-design/hyperbolic-discounting-aefb7acec46e
• Nielsen, J. (2008). How little do users read? Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/
• O’Donoghue, T., & Rabin, M. (2000). The economics of immediate gratification.  Journal of behavioral decisión making ,  13 (2), 233-250.
• Özdemir, Y., Kuzucu, Y., & Ak, Ş. (2014). Depression, loneliness and Internet addiction: How important is low self-control?.  Computers in Human Behavior ,  34 , 284-290.
• Patel, N. (2014). The psychology of instant gratification and how it will revolutionize your marketing approach. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235088
• Taubenfeld, E. (2017). The culture of impatience and instant gratification. Study Breaks: Culture. Retrieved from https://studybreaks.com/culture/instant-gratification/
• Urban, T. (2013). Why procrastinators procrastinate. Wait But Why. Retrieved from https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html

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What our readers think.

Is delayed gratification out of style? Wonder, these days more people are making trips to see psychologists or even worse psychiatrists? Like to hear from them. Enjoyed reading ur article. Thanks

Thank you for this very well written piece, and also the cross-reference to Tim Urban. His TED talk was amazing too.

Thank you for this article, it was helpful. The only thing I feel should be expanded upon is how childhood neglect and instability can make a person become addicted to instant gratification, it’s not all about laziness or spoiled behaviour. For example, my childhood was so unstable I took any pleasure I could get before it slipped away as I didn’t know how crazy the next day would be. It made me unaccustomed to say no to myself as I grew into a more stable life where I didn’t need to do that.

Very interesting article, and what you say about how it’s viewed across generations rings true — in my ears!

The example regarding instant photography, though, serves as a reminder how instant-this or instant-that is a reflection on productivity improvements. Hopefully, that benefits us and others.

Thank you for your insight and clear presentation!

Thanks for guilting me into reading this to the end 🙂 . Good article. Typo: In the quotation by Judith Wright, “As we get part our … “, “part” should be “past”.

Whoops! Thank you for bringing this to our attention — we’ve corrected this now. 🙂

– Nicole | Community Manager

Yes, I agree. It very important to reward ourselves or get pampered sometimes after a hardwork. This will surely help to get us refreshed and be ready for another day of work. Thanks for sharing this article.

Hi there, I completely agree. And we know from research that taking time for recovery through activities that are relaxing and enjoyable is really helpful for ensuring positive mood the next day at work (just in case you needed another reason to pamper yourself!) Thanks for reading. – Nicole | Community Manager

Yes, I strongly agree with what you said. Giving yourself a break once in a while is important, as is treating yourself to a reward after hard work. I think that by doing this, you can be refreshed again and work well again with a smile. Thanks for sharing this article.

Great read! I really love how things are explained! I am proud of myself finish reading this whole article . Which I think, I don’t want to belong to with this generation of “instant gratification” rather put myself with this “ delayed gratification” Yipees!

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The Culture of Impatience and Instant Gratification  

Sometimes, I yell at my phone when the screen freezes. Just last week, I felt my heartbeat rapidly increasing and my legs shaking when the customer service representative from Amazon put me on hold for a few minutes because my package didn’t arrive in two days. It turned out that my package got lost somewhere between UPS and my apartment, so I had to wait a whole extra two days to receive my order.

Waiting four days for a delivery seems like an eternity in today’s society, as more consumers have become accustomed to the instant gratification afforded by technology.

Instant gratification is the need to experience fulfillment without any sort of delay or wait. This applies to a whole host of things including online pornography, gambling, and drug and alcohol use . When it comes to gambling in particular, there is a plethora of new online casinos on the market that are luring in an ever-growing amount of players by promising great fun and easy wins. Ultimately, you want it now, like greedy little Veruca Salt sings right up until she falls down Willy Wonka’s garbage chute. Waiting can be really hard, and when people don’t get what they want, the psychological reaction is anxiety.

To capitalize on that desire, companies are taking consumer anxiety and sprinting with it, like Absolutely , offering same-day delivery services, eliminating the need to wait for a taxi and providing the ability to stream full seasons of TV shows within seconds.

If you think about it, anything can be delivered: food, flowers, furniture, clean laundry, instant answers on Google, groceries and even people. Well, not literally people, but with apps like Tinder , Grindr and JSwipe , there are 50 million  romantic candidates right at your fingertips, waiting for you to filter them by location, sexuality, religion, hobbies and how desperate they are for a partner.

Retailers too are reaping the benefits of society’s growing impatience. Walmart and eBay have challenged Amazon in a battle of which company can deliver the fastest, because consumer habits have made it clear that they will pay big bucks to avoid the wait, leading places like Disney World to profit off of passes that allow consumers to skip the line.

Instant gratification has even made its way into your living room, as DVRs have eliminated the need to watch commercials or wait for show times. Some companies, such ABC and NBC, have resorted to forcing their viewers to watch their advertisements by adding features that prevent them from fast-forwarding. In the same vein, internet providers are delivering faster connections — for a higher cost, of course — and are tempting buyers with their advertising speeds.

The patience of internet users is notoriously slow, and even minuscule differences in buffer times can have massive impacts on the success of a business. University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Ramesh Sitaraman conducted a study to establish the point at which people begin to leave a YouTube video that loads slowly.

He concluded that videos begin losing viewers at a delay of two seconds, and every one second of waiting after that marks a 5.8 percent increase in the number of people who leave. A wait of 40 seconds or more will eliminate one third of the audience.

Such demand for instantaneous feedback has repercussions beyond internet usage and purchasing habits; a society that experiences fewer and fewer waits in its daily habits will slowly possess less and less patience. In certain fields, a lack of patience is fine, but when raising children, teaching others or climbing the professional ladder, there is no way around slow, sometimes excruciating periods of growth.

Consider a recent graduate working in their first career. Their tendency to expect fast feedback will lead to disappointment when they are passed over for raises and promotions, and even a lack of positive reinforcement may lead them to struggle to stay motivated. When they don’t receive the expected fulfillment, they may feel frustrated and in extreme cases, may even seek a new job. In certain arenas accomplishments take time, and without a degree of patience, the pat on the back so many millennials are looking for will never be quick enough.

What’s more, instant gratification doesn’t grant lasting satisfaction; its entire purpose is to substitute the deep pleasure of earned enjoyment with the fleeting pleasure of instant enjoyment. People enjoy the rush of their phones beeping with a new text message, but the feeling of that pleasure disappears quickly after it comes. There isn’t anything wrong with wanting or needing objects, experiences or people within a certain amount of time, but it’s important to be able to exhibit restraint when you need to.

Instant gratification is to be expected in particular circumstances. If you order a pizza for dinner, you can expect the restaurant to deliver that order within a time frame. There is instant feedback from social media because followers can see your photos and status updates immediately. Your cell phone is always in your pocket so the connection is constant. There is no need for patience.

But letting the thrill of instant gratification deteriorate your ability to delay gratification is problematic, and will lead to serious problems on an individual and community basis. For instance, diagnoses of attention deficit disorder in children have skyrocketed in the last decade, and even the amount of adults being prescribed medication has soared. Society is losing its ability to focus.

With shorter attention spans, fewer and fewer people are choosing to read books, magazines and long articles. My grandmother is an elementary school principal, and she has begun noticing her students gravitating more toward graphic novels, most likely because of their short sentences and profusion of blank space. Even writing this article, I have consciously decided to keep the paragraphs shorter in order to make the information less overwhelming for the impatient millennial.

The good news is that more and more people are recognizing the issues of technology and are seeking ways to calm their racing minds. Last year, money spent on yoga increased to a record-breaking $16 million, and although many find it difficult to disconnect, they feel more relaxed in the end.

With the abundance of instant gratification, it’s difficult to recognize that people don’t need immediate satisfaction to feel happy. It’s important to remember how beneficial patience can be, because the best things in life are more than a click away.

• instant gratification

Emma Taubenfeld, Pace University

Arts and entertainment management, social media, 29 comments.

[…] we’re entitled to know everything immediately. And it’s a problem that may get worse over time. This recent blog post discusses the dangers of perpetuating a culture that expects immediate […]

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[…] Taubenfeld of Pace University writes, instant gratification doesn’t grant lasting satisfaction; its entire purpose is to substitute […]

[…] Taubenfeld, E. (2017). The culture of impatience and instant gratification. Study Breaks: Culture. Retrieved from https://studybreaks.com/culture/instant-gratification/ […]

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University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Magazine

Gotta Have It Now, Right Now

Author: Ronald J. Alsop

Published: Winter 2011-12

Editor’s Note: Itching to check your email? Phone pinging? Tempted to tune into the latest Twitter outrage? Our digital distractions have been dividing our attention for years. Almost a decade ago, Ronald J. Alsop considered the social implications — particularly the impact on a generation raised on instant gratification — in this Magazine Classic.

As I write this article, I am struggling to resist the urge to peek at my email. I realize that checking it would partly be an escape for me when the words don’t flow freely. But I also may be a perfect example of how technology has intensified people’s need for instant gratification.

• Related article
• Wired for Rewards

Even though I don’t know what my inbox might hold, it’s that uncertainty, along with the expectation I just might find a gratifying message, that makes me want to look. David Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford, Connecticut, likens my email experience to playing a slot machine. I’m not going to feel the excitement of winning a jackpot, but subconsciously I realize that a waiting message could contain a bit of good news.

“The hit when you get a good email is like the hit of winning money,” says Greenfield. “It provides instant gratification.”

Whether on our computers or at casinos, we are indeed a culture increasingly driven by our need for instant gratification. We want — no, demand — everything right now.

Once a virtue, patience is becoming as rare as handwritten letters. Examples of the need for instant gratification abound. A friend who works at a Williams-Sonoma store was fuming one day recently when a shopper called him incompetent and demanded his name and the customer service number so she could report him. The crime: She had to wait 10 minutes to pay for her bag of pasta.

Everything from on-demand movies to scratch-off lottery tickets to instant messages has heightened people’s sense of urgency. At Walt Disney World, FastPass tickets cut your wait time for the most popular rides. Cosmetics marketers promise a facelift in a flash with products like Maybelline Instant Age Rewind. Online, instantly downloaded music purchases have put record stores out of business. And there’s no need for high school seniors to worry for long about college admission decisions: Apply “early decision” and learn your fate within a month or so.

“Things are happening so fast and information can be obtained so quickly that it does bias us toward instant gratification,” says Darrell Worthy, assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University. “Five or 10 years ago, I would have been more able to sit down and read an entire journal article. Now I tend to read through the abstract and figures more quickly. I’m focused on acquiring the gist of things.”

Although people save time and may even be more productive in our accelerated world, the need for instant gratification raises concerns about our work ethic, social interactions, character development, even our mental health. Some people are so impatient and so driven by instant technology that they never unplug, never slow down. They don’t take time for contemplation and relaxation, and, according to some mental health professionals, they are at greater risk for addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, video games and the Internet.

A number of societal trends, including easy credit and unfettered consumer buying before the Great Recession, the explosive growth of legalized gambling and the technology revolution, have stoked people’s desire for instant gratification. At the same time, our business and government leaders also demonstrate little tolerance for moderation and long-term planning. Staggering federal and state budget deficits show a reckless lack of self-control, and Wall Street’s fixation with short-term results puts pressure on companies to deliver quarterly gains at any cost. That mentality, along with personal greed, accounted in large part for the financial scandals at Enron, Tyco and other companies a decade ago, and for the extreme risk-taking that brought down Lehman Brothers and the world economy in 2008. A “spend now, save later” mindset also figured strongly in the housing market collapse. While predatory lenders took advantage of unqualified prospects in the subprime mortgage crisis, the homebuyers were also to blame for their unwillingness to delay a home purchase until they truly qualified for credit. Their parents likely worked extra hours or took second jobs as they scrimped and saved to buy a home, but who can wait that long anymore? Financial experts fret about people’s failure to delay gratification and save money, especially for their retirement years.

“I feel that America has become the culture of now, the culture of present consumption,” says Stephen Utkus, a principal with the Vanguard Group’s Center for Retirement Research. “It’s a major problem that people can’t get over their present-day bias and plan for retirement. And the financial system has been an enabler with the easy access to credit.”

The U.S. personal savings rate began dropping in the mid-1980s, the era of Madonna’s “Material Girl,” and has never come close again to the double digits of the 1970s and early 1980s. Meanwhile, consumers’ debt load rose steadily during the previous decade, peaking in 2007 just before the economy cratered.

Wanting things faster is by no means a new phenomenon. The Polaroid instant camera was invented in 1948, the same year the first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opened. FedEx created its powerful international brand with the 1980s ad slogan, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” At about the same time, the microwave oven became a kitchen staple and the plastic squeeze bottle took the anticipation out of pouring Heinz ketchup.

But the world moves ever faster, and it seems that people are becoming less and less patient. Remember the days when waiting for a dial-up connection for the Internet seemed perfectly reasonable and gave you enough time to grab a cup of coffee? Now if a high-speed connection takes more than a few seconds, people complain to their Internet provider. Can’t stand waiting a few seconds for search engine results? Now, Google Instant reveals possible matches while you’re still typing in your request. Google determined that people type slowly, taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes but only 30 milliseconds to glance at another part of the page and scan it. If everyone around the world uses Google Instant, the company estimates, they will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day in Internet search time.

That figure is something the millennial generation would surely appreciate. The need for speed is especially pronounced with millennials, who literally grew up on technology. They were born in the 1980s and 1990s as, first, personal computers and video games, and, later, the Internet and cell phones came to dominate our lives. My teenage son and other millennials find it hard to believe that their parents once had to sit through television commercials, search for a pay phone to make a call if their car broke down and spent hours in the library combing through books for college research papers. A college intern who worked for me recently didn’t know what I meant when I suggested he look in a telephone directory or call directory assistance when he couldn’t quickly track down a source on the Internet for an article he was writing.

Helicopter parents who hover over their millennial children have fed into the need for instant gratification by intervening to solve every problem, buying them the latest in fashion and technology, and dishing out praise for even the smallest accomplishment. Because many things have come easily to millennials, they aren’t always willing to pay their dues. Some educators and employers worry that their work ethic isn’t as strong as that of previous generations and that they are willing to cut corners and even cheat in school to get what they want now.

For their part, millennials make no excuses for their impatience. Nearly three quarters agree that they want instant gratification, according to a survey by the career center at California State University, Fullerton, and Spectrum Knowledge, a research and training firm in Cerritos, California. “It is almost an innate instinct of ours to receive instant feedback for something we do, not because we are greedy, careless or selfish but because we grew up that way,” Kristin Dziadul said in a post on Social Media Today, an online community for PR and marketing professionals. “Many people criticize our age cohort because we are this way, but consider how you would respond to things if you grew up experiencing feedback or rewards after everything you did.”

As millennials grow older, their need for instant gratification is extending well beyond the virtual world. Teachers find it harder to engage millennials in class because many want fast-paced, interactive lessons that entertain them. I once sat in the back of a classroom at the University of California at Berkeley and observed a fascinating discussion of business ethics. I was appalled that several students were checking email and surfing the Internet rather than paying attention.

Struggling to compete with YouTube and Facebook, some professors try to connect lessons with popular music and movies. Others give condensed reading assignments rather than entire books. And some schools even provide students with video iPods for online lessons.

While I applaud such creativity and dedication to trying to motivate students, I believe such approaches could shortchange them. Already many students aren’t developing the sound problem-solving skills they will need in their lives and careers. They don’t take time to do the thoughtful research that ambiguous problems — the stuff of life — require.

Millennials also expect near daily praise and feedback from their teachers and bosses, as well as rapid promotions and steady pay increases. Julie Heitzler, human resources manager at the Orlando Airport Marriott Hotel, sometimes feels she should be further along in her career at age 29. Yet when she looks around at her peers within Marriott, she finds that she is one of the few millennials at her level. “As I’m growing older and younger millennials are entering the workforce,” she says, “I am starting to see that some of the expectations, especially timing, we have for our careers can be unrealistic.”

Millennials’ reward mentality is proving to be a major challenge for employers around the world. I recently spoke at a college recruiting conference in Venice, Italy, where employers complained about their excessive expectations. “They don’t want to wait,” Federica Gianotti, a recruiting specialist for Iveco, an Italian truck and bus manufacturer, told me. “It’s always ‘What can the company give me?’ not ‘What can I give the company?’”

The Great Recession and its aftermath have certainly thwarted millennials’ desire for instant gratification in the form of a dream job. “There’s a lot of pent-up frustration,” says Jim Case, director of Cal State Fullerton’s career center. “They’re not getting jobs and a lot of postponement — marriage, buying a house — is being forced on them by the economy.”

As the millennials demonstrate so vividly, it’s technology and gadgets, from social networks to smartphones, that have really put our culture on steroids. Mobile phone owners between 18 and 24 years of age exchange an average of 109.5 text messages a day, according to the Pew Research Center, and 90 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds sleep with their phones. One new bride recently posted the happy news on her Facebook page — as she was walking out of the church. Some surveys even show that people check texts and answer cell phones while having sex because they simply can’t wait to see who’s contacting them.

While the millennials epitomize the instant gratification culture, the next generation could want things even faster. Some parents are giving babies and toddlers cell phones, iPads and other tablet devices loaded with entertaining applications that may or may not have any educational value. A new survey from Common Sense Media found that 10 percent of children under age 2 have used mobile devices, as have 39 percent of 2-to-4-year-olds and more than half of 5-to-8-year-olds. The growing number of televisions, computers and mobile devices in homes and automobiles recently prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics to warn parents to limit children’s time in front of video screens so they have time for creative play and interaction with other people.

To be sure, ever-faster technology can be beneficial when it connects us to the right information in seconds. Some people maintain that instant technology not only is rewarding, but it also makes them more productive. Many pride themselves on multitasking on computers and mobile devices. But a growing body of scientific research shows that multitasking is a myth. The need for stimulation from multiple sources simultaneously plays havoc with our brains and our performance. A Stanford University research study in 2009 concluded that people who are being bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

People can talk on the phone while answering emails and watching a video, but their focus is split and performance suffers. What’s more, the compulsion to check email, send texts and talk on cellphones becomes extremely dangerous when people are driving. The National Safety Council estimates that more than a quarter of all traffic crashes — over 1.6 million a year — involve cell phone calls or texting. Some lawyers even call mobile phone use the DWI of the 21st century.

The need for a quick technology fix is making people not only less focused but also less considerate. Inevitably, perhaps, instant gratification comes at the expense of civility. Although it’s impolite and annoying to others, people these days routinely check their email and send texts in the middle of dinner with friends, during business meetings or while speakers make presentations at conferences. At a performance of The Color Purple  on Broadway, friends of mine had to endure texting between the woman seated next to them and her husband a few rows behind. The couple couldn’t stay focused on the play that they had paid over $200 to attend and didn’t mind disturbing those around them.

Such behavior recently prompted the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago to ask patrons to refrain from texting until intermission. Glowing phones on vibrate may be quiet, but they can be quite distracting in a darkened theater. “When people live in the now, they want to share their experiences in real time; they can’t wait to announce that they’re blown away by the play they’re watching,” says David Rosenberg, Steppenwolf’s communications director. “But for us at the Steppenwolf, sending texts and tweets during the performance is distracting and unacceptable. Actors complain that they can see the lights from the texting, and more audience members are saying they’re distracted from the play.”

A few of those texting and tweeting theatergoers might be looking for a date after the play. That may seem like short notice, but some of the latest mobile apps promise the ultimate in speed dating — or at least hookups. While traditional online matchmaking services mean weeks of searching profiles and meeting potential mates, new mobile applications, such as Blendr and OKCupid Locals, offer instant gratification by connecting people in the blink of an eye. Through location-based technology, the apps reveal who is nearby and might be up for a drink, a date or just a sexual encounter. Such quick and easy connections could devalue relationships and lead to an obsession with sexual hookups.

Of course, the need for instant gratification underlies most addictions, whether to sex, drugs, alcohol or gambling. Now some therapists believe people suffer from Internet addiction because they’re hooked on social media, video games, and online gambling and sex sites. There is even debate among therapists over whether to add Internet addiction to the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Some universities, including Notre Dame, provide counseling services for Internet addiction, and specialized treatment centers offer both outpatient and residential programs to people who lack the impulse control to disconnect from computers and smartphones.

“We try to prevent our children from gambling, but there isn’t the same cultural awareness about how addicting digital technology can be,” says Hilarie Cash, executive director of the reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Program in Fall City, Washington. “Parents aren’t placing the appropriate boundaries around Internet use; they don’t understand how addictive the gratification can be from constant text messaging and online game playing.”

Since it opened in 2009, the reStart therapeutic retreat center has attracted about 40 young adults, mostly between the ages of 18 and 28, whose online obsession interfered with their college studies and their offline relationships. The patients spend at least 45 days at the center where they receive therapy and have no access to digital technology. Many also need to develop better daily habits, including hygiene, exercise, diet and sleep.

While most people won’t fall victim to an addiction, some mental health professionals and academics worry that we are so connected to the Internet and smartphones that we aren’t taking time for contemplation and relaxation. Mark Zupan, the dean of the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, finds updating his microeconomics textbook with his co-author much more efficient these days using the Internet rather than doing research in a library. But he told me that he sometimes longs for the time when he could lose himself in a library for three or four hours without any interruptions. He also misses the days when he couldn’t access email from airplanes. “Now if I’m on a flight where I can get email, I feel that I have to go through all my messages before we land,” he says. “That used to be time to read and relax.”

Indeed, downtime and thoughtful reflection are essential to sound decision-making, creativity and innovation. Breakthrough solutions to problems don’t come easily or quickly — or through Google searches. In fact, a friend of mine won’t let his children use Google for their homework until they have tried to figure out answers through plain old thinking.

“We have devalued the time we spend alone just thinking, but it’s that time for reflection that leads to the big ideas,” says Daniel Forrester, the author of Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organization . “Multitasking is espoused and almost glorified in the United States, but it is dehumanizing us and making us less creative.”

There are some signs of resistance to constant connectivity, particularly on social networks. An online group called the Anti-Facebook League of Intelligentsia pledges “to revive man’s ability to experience life” and celebrate “a spirit of self-sacrifice in place of self-indulgence.”

To most people, waiting is a waste of time, a feeling that technology only accentuates. But Harold Schweizer, an English professor at Bucknell University, begs to differ. He is an ardent advocate of the value of waiting and has written a book titled On Waiting . To him, waiting and delaying gratification can be regenerative and restful, as well as a time for inspiration and fresh ideas. Instant gratification, on the other hand, must be frantically repeated and is in the end “no gratification at all,” he says. “Indeed, instant gratification is perhaps the endless delay of gratification.”

He has incorporated pauses and waiting time into his teaching to give students more time for unexpected insights about a poem or other piece of literature. “Objects and experiences acquire value through the act of waiting,” he says. “If instant gratification devalues, if impatience is a form of greed, perhaps patience, then, is a generosity, an intentional giving of one’s time, a giving of oneself.”

So there’s truth in that old chestnut — what’s worth having is worth waiting for. Successful entrepreneurs certainly must have a tolerance for delayed gratification. Watching their dream come to life in a new product or company is rewarding, but they know it may take years to see a financial payoff. Delaying gratification can take practice. For most people, willpower doesn’t come naturally. That’s why FranklinCovey, a training and consulting firm in Salt Lake City, Utah, sees a new business opportunity in teaching “urgency addicts” to manage their time by focusing on what really matters on the job and in their personal lives.

“As humans, we have always been wired for instant gratification, but technology has kicked up that biological need,” says Leigh Stevens, a partner in FranklinCovey’s productivity practice. “We have to stop the madness and be deliberate about choices. We have to learn to act on the important and not react to the urgent.”

Some people have developed their own individual strategies to try to control expectations for instant responses to messages. Ron Culp, a public-relations consultant and director of the graduate program in PR and advertising at DePaul University, checks his email frequently and may write replies right away — but he doesn’t hit send. Instead, he sets up the responses so that late night messages don’t go out until the next morning. That way, people won’t start expecting instant responses no matter what the hour.

Others take breaks from being connected 24/7 by exercising without any electronic appendages. Schweizer at Bucknell, for example, slows down by hiking, bicycling and kayaking on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. “I move my arms and legs in the rhythm of my body, in the rhythm of the time that I am,” he says, “and I recover a little.”

The Pew Research Center found in a 2011 survey that 29 percent of cell phone owners turn off their mobile devices for a while just to get a break. That’s what Kate Robertson does sometimes. She also removes email from her iPhone every few months so she isn’t constantly checking it and can take time to really enjoy conversation with friends or a stroll around the streets of downtown Chicago where she works. “It’s nice to think and just observe what’s around me,” says Robertson, a project manager at Eduvantis, a consulting and marketing services firm for colleges and business schools. “Do I really have to see the latest Groupon offer immediately?”

But the 30-year-old concedes that she feels lost without her phone, especially because of its music and maps. “And I do get excited when I receive a message,” she says. People get instant gratification from their phones, she believes, because they feel “like they are loved, that they have friends looking for them, friends responding to them.”

When people like Robertson decide to untether themselves from technology, they may need to prepare their Facebook friends and other online connections, who expect the gratification of an instant response. “There is social pressure to be immediately responsive,” says David Levy, a professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, who advocates balancing technology with meditation and contemplation. “It’s becoming harder to create protected space and time for yourself because it might be read as being uncaring or unavailable by others.”

He and other experts strongly encourage parents to help their children develop the ability to delay gratification and lose their sense of entitlement. Parents and teachers can make young people work more to earn rewards and privileges, praise them when they exercise self-discipline and show them the value of taking time to think reflectively.

“We need to reward self-control in children rather than focus on building their self-esteem,” says Roy Baumeister, a social psychology professor at Florida State University and co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength . “The two traits that most predict success in life are self-control and intelligence.”

Research indicates that some individuals may have a predisposition to either impulsivity or self-control. Some 40 years ago in the most famous study of instant gratification, children at Stanford University were told they could eat one marshmallow right away or wait 15 or 20 minutes to get two. Some couldn't resist the temptation; other held out longer in anticipation of a bigger treat. Follow-up studies with some of the children as adults revealed that the tendency to seek instant or delayed gratification didn’t change over time. What’s more, the children who waited longer at age 4 later scored significantly higher on the SAT, were better educated, felt a stronger sense of self-worth, coped more effectively with stress and were less likely to use cocaine/crack than those who couldn’t delay gratification.

“As a group, those who could not stop themselves at 4 could not at 40,” says BJ Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. “This appears to be a personality trait that is relatively stable.”

She and fellow researchers observed differences in the brains of the two groups in one of the follow-up studies (see related story), but she says it isn’t an issue of either nature or nurture. “We know that experience can turn genes on and off. Even early experiences could have shaped the behavior of the 4-year-olds and those experiences could have continued.”

Whether we are governed more by nature or nature, Mother Nature sometimes takes control and shows us we can’t always get the instant gratification that comes even from something so basic as electricity. An editorial in the Westport, Connecticut, newspaper in September suggested that people suffering power outages from Hurricane Irene should try to patiently accept the fact that “the plug is pulled on instant gratification” and they can’t always be first in line to get what they want — their electricity restored.

I agree with the editorial’s premise based on recent firsthand experience. After losing heat and electricity for six days following the freakish October nor’easter in New Jersey, I learned to survive without lights and my desktop computer and even without my cars, which were trapped in the garage by nonfunctioning electric door openers. Resourceful people, including myself, were still able to get our hit of instant gratification — and caffeine — by recharging ourselves and our mobile phones and laptops at the local Starbucks. It became my town’s central meeting place, as people swapped stories about the storm and shared extension cords to make the most of the limited number of electrical outlets.

Turns out we can give up the comforts of a cozy, warm room, refrigerated food and even our cars much easier than the instant gratification of texts, tweets, email and Facebook connections.

Author Ronald Alsop ’s books include  The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace. 

• Magazine Classics

April 13, 2024

published by phi beta kappa

Print or web publication, instant gratification.

As the economy gets ever better at satisfying our immediate, self-serving needs, who is minding the future?

A half-hour east of Seattle, not far from the headquarters of Microsoft, Amazon, and other icons of the digital revolution, reSTART, a rehab center for Internet addicts, reveals some of the downsides of that revolution. Most of the clients here are trying to quit online gaming, an obsession that has turned their careers, relationships, and health to shambles. For the outsider, the addiction can be incomprehensible. But listening to the patients’ stories, the appeal comes sharply into focus. In a living room overlooking the lawn, 29-year-old Brett Walker talks about his time in World of Warcraft, a popular online role-playing game in which participants become warriors in a steampunk medieval world. For four years, even as his real life collapsed, Walker enjoyed a near-perfect online existence, with unlimited power and status akin to that of a Mafia boss crossed with a rock star. “I could do whatever I wanted, go where I wanted,” Walker tells me with a mixture of pride and self-mockery. “The world was my oyster.”

Walker appreciates the irony. His endless hours as an online superhero left him physically weak, financially destitute, and so socially isolated he could barely hold a face-to-face conversation. There may also have been deeper effects. Studies suggest that heavy online gaming alters brain structures involved in decision making and self-control, much as drug and alcohol use do. Emotional development can be delayed or derailed, leaving the player with a sense of self that is incomplete, fragile, and socially disengaged—more id than superego. Or as Hilarie Cash, reSTART cofounder and an expert in online addiction, tells me, “We end up being controlled by our impulses.”

Which, for gaming addicts, means being even more susceptible to the complex charms of the online world. Gaming companies want to keep players playing as long as possible—the more you play, the more likely you’ll upgrade to the next version. To this end, game designers have created sophisticated data feedback systems that keep players on an upgrade treadmill. As Walker and his peers battle their way through their virtual worlds, the data they generate are captured and used to make subsequent game iterations even more “immersive,” which means players play more, and generate still more data, which inform even more immersive iterations, and so on. World of Warcraft releases periodic patches featuring new weapons and skills that players must have if they want to keep their godlike powers, which they always do. The result is a perpetual-motion machine, driven by companies’ hunger for revenues, but also by players’ insatiable appetite for self-aggrandizement. Until the day he quit, Walker never once declined the chance to “level up,” but instead consumed each new increment of power as soon as it was offered—even as it sapped his power in real life.

On the surface, stories of people like Brett Walker may not seem relevant to those of us who don’t spend our days waging virtual war. But these digital narratives center on a dilemma that every citizen in postindustrial society will eventually confront: how to cope with a consumer culture almost too good at giving us what we want. I don’t just mean the way smartphones and search engines and Netflix and Amazon anticipate our preferences. I mean how the entire edifice of the consumer economy, digital and actual, has reoriented itself around our own agendas, self-images, and inner fantasies. In North America and the United Kingdom, and to a lesser degree in Europe and Japan, it is now entirely normal to demand a personally customized life. We fine-tune our moods with pharmaceuticals and Spotify. We craft our meals around our allergies and ideologies. We can choose a vehicle to express our hipness or hostility. We can move to a neighborhood that matches our social values, find a news outlet that mirrors our politics, and create a social network that “likes” everything we say or post. With each transaction and upgrade, each choice and click, life moves closer to us, and the world becomes our world.

And yet … the world we’re busily refashioning in our own image has some serious problems. Certainly, our march from one level of gratification to the next has imposed huge costs—most recently in a credit binge that nearly sank the global economy. But the issue here isn’t only one of overindulgence or a wayward consumer culture. Even as the economy slowly recovers, many people still feel out of balance and unsteady. It’s as if the quest for constant, seamless self-expression has become so deeply embedded that, according to social scientists like Robert Putnam, it is undermining the essential structures of everyday life. In everything from relationships to politics to business, the emerging norms and expectations of our self-centered culture are making it steadily harder to behave in thoughtful, civic, social ways. We struggle to make lasting commitments. We’re uncomfortable with people or ideas that don’t relate directly and immediately to us. Empathy weakens, and with it, our confidence in the idea, essential to a working democracy, that we have anything in common.

Our unease isn’t new, exactly. In the 1970s, social critics such as Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, and Tom Wolfe warned that our growing self-absorption was starving the idealism and aspirations of the postwar era. The “logic of individualism,” argued Lasch in his 1978 polemic, The Culture of Narcissism, had transformed everyday life into a brutal social competition for affirmation that was sapping our days of meaning and joy. Yet even these pessimists had no idea how self-centered mainstream culture would become. Nor could they have imagined the degree to which the selfish reflexes of the individual would become the template for an entire society. Under the escalating drive for quick, efficient “returns,” our whole socioeconomic system is adopting an almost childlike impulsiveness, wholly obsessed with short-term gain and narrow self-interest and increasingly oblivious to long-term consequences.

This new impulsiveness is most obvious in the business world, where an increasingly fanatical and self-justifying emphasis on quarterly earnings, share price, and executive bonuses has led to a pattern of self-serving, high-risk strategies. This “short-termism,” as economists call it, helped bring down financial markets in 2008—and it continues to destabilize the economy and the job market and undercut the future of the middle class. French economist Thomas Piketty blames rising inequality on capital’s natural tendency to replicate faster than the overall economy. But the more immediate culprit may be the institutionalization of an economic model so focused on quick, self-serving rewards, and so inured to long-term social costs, that it is destroying the economic foundations on which real prosperity depends.

This industrial-scale impulsiveness isn’t confined to the business world. The media, academia, nonprofits, and think tanks—the very institutions that once helped counter the individual pursuit of quick, self-serving rewards—are themselves obsessed with the same rewards. Most troubling, our political institutions, once capable of mobilizing resources and people to win wars, solve problems, and drive real progress, now settle for rapid wins while avoiding complex, perennial challenges, such as education reform, climate change, or preventing the next financial meltdown. The worst recession in three quarters of a century should have led us to rethink an economic model based on automatic upgrades and short-term gains. Instead, we’ve continued to focus our economic energies, entrepreneurial talents, and innovation on getting the biggest returns in the shortest time possible. Worse, we’ve done so even though fewer and fewer of us can afford to keep up with the Sisyphean pursuit of ever-faster gratification—a frustration expressed in the angry populism now paralyzing our politics. From top to bottom, we are becoming a society ruled by impulse, by the reflexive reach for quick rewards. We are becoming an Impulse Society.

To truly understand our predicament, we must realize that this crisis is a consequence not of our failures but of our extraordinary successes. Over the past century, and especially the past four decades, we have created a sophisticated, self-feeding socioeconomic system that is marvelously efficient at catering to our desires. Even as the economy has split between the haves and the have-nots, the miracles of cost-reducing business strategies and powerful personal technologies mean that all but the poorest among us have nonetheless gained an extraordinary measure of self-gratifying power. Indeed, in many respects, our economic system now indulges our desires with such speed and efficiency and personalized precision that it’s getting harder to know where we stop and the market begins. I don’t merely mean that clever marketers have gotten inside our heads or that our smartphones now feel like body parts—although both are true. I mean that our preferences, attitudes, and identities have become so intertwined with the offerings of the marketplace that we have internalized many of the market’s values and reflexes—particularly the market’s relentless drive for ever greater, ever faster, more efficient returns. Put another way, the marketplace and the self, our economy and our psychology, are fusing in ways we’ve never before experienced.

If we could step back a century, before the rise of the consumer economy, we would be struck not only by the lack of affluence and technology but also by the distance between people and the economy, by the separation of economic and emotional life. People back then weren’t any less wrapped up in economic activities. The difference lay in where most of that activity took place. A century ago, economic activity occurred primarily in the physical world of production . People made things: they farmed, crafted, cobbled, nailed, baked, brined, brewed. They created tangible goods and services whose value could be determined, often as not, by the measurable needs and requirements of their physical, external lives.

That relationship changed with the rise of the consumer economy. Sophisticated, large-scale industrial systems assumed the task of making many of the things we needed, and also began to focus on the things we wanted . As the consumer economy matured, an ever-larger share of economic activity came from discretionary consumption, driven not by need but by desire, and thus by the intangible criteria of people’s inner worlds: their aspirations and hopes, identities and secret cravings, anxieties and ennui. As these inner worlds came to play a larger role in the economy—and, in particular, as companies’ profits and workers’ wages came to depend increasingly on the gratification of ephemeral (but conveniently endless) appetites—the entire marketplace became more attuned to the mechanics of the self. Bit by bit, product by product, the marketplace drew closer to the self.

For most of the 20th century, this merger proceeded at a gradual pace. But starting in the 1970s, the convergence was kicked into overdrive by two powerful shocks. The first was the collapse of America’s postwar economic boom in the face of high oil prices, inflation, and rising foreign competition. As corporate profits fell, it was clear that many U.S. firms had grown too complacent and inefficient to prosper in a faster, more global economy. With company shares trading at historic lows, activist investors launched an economic coup. They bought struggling companies, broke them up, and sold the pieces, often for substantial profit. As takeover fever spread (encouraged by the parallel deregulatory fever then sweeping Washington), even healthy companies embraced defensive strategies to boost profits and share prices and keep investors happy. Companies laid off workers and began moving operations overseas. As important, they began paying their executives in company stock, thereby ensuring that those executives would do whatever was necessary to keep share prices high. Corporate strategy and investor desire were now effectively fused.

The “shareholder revolution,” as Wall Street dubbed it without irony, was a shock to the nation’s business psyche. For more than half a century, corporate America, heavily pressured by labor and an openly interventionist government, had hewed to a paternalistic capitalism, under which a large share of profits was reinvested in everything from worker training to community charities. But those times were over, for according to many conservative economists, it was partly such misplaced corporate generosity that had weakened U.S. companies in the first place. For these critics, the only way American companies could help society was, paradoxically, to jettison the older notion that business had any separate, social obligations other than making maximum profit. As Milton Friedman, an icon of conservative economics, argued in a seminal New York Times essay, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” And the best way for government to help this happen was to turn companies loose, by cutting taxes and regulations, and thereby allow the efficiencies of the marketplace to find the most direct route back to wealth.

The shareholder revolution would have upended American society in any case. But its effects were magnified by a second shock—a potent new technology, the microprocessor, which made computing vastly more powerful and much cheaper. By the 1980s, computer speed was doubling, and computer costs were halving, every two years—a trend, known as Moore’s Law, that quickly transformed every sector of the consumer economy. Business processes, from design to marketing, could now be supercharged and accelerated. (In Detroit, for instance, the time needed to bring a new car from drawing board to showroom fell from four years to 18 months.) By cutting the time between investment and profit, computers gave business a potent new tool to generate the faster returns that Wall Street was demanding—but also to deliver the gratifications consumers were now coming to expect.

The steep curve of Moore’s Law perfectly reflected the accelerating pace of the merger of market and self. Computers not only helped businesses cut costs (from 1970 to 1990, consumer prices fell 26 percent, in real terms) but also to produce and distribute a much larger variety of goods. For instance, whereas a 1950s-era supermarket might have sold 3,000 different products, or “stock-keeping units” (SKUs), by 1990 the number had risen to more than 30,000. In everything from cars and clothing to interior decoration and music, consumers could choose from among a nearly infinite menu of products and services to craft a consumption experience that perfectly suited their individual tastes.

Customization was becoming not just a consumer choice but an approach to life. By the 1990s, many Americans were moving to cities and neighborhoods for the same reasons they might have used to pick the cars they drove or the clothes they wore. As Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort, observes, whereas we once moved to be near work or family, we were increasingly relocating “for a whole set of ‘life-style’ reasons,” such as cultural amenities, proximity to shopping malls and sports stadiums, and, especially, politics. “People have become very calculating,” Bishop told me. “In ways our parents never even thought of, people are parsing the choice of where to live as if they were going through a menu at a restaurant.”

Even if our faltering incomes present an obstacle to personalization, the new economy has offered fixes here, too. As early as the 1980s, digital technologies meant banks and other companies could not only approve credit in minutes, instead of days and weeks, but also more easily sell loans to Wall Street investors and use the proceeds to make still more loans. As the supply of credit has risen, banks have grown much more creative, and aggressive, in marketing loans for home improvement, college education, vacations, boats, debt consolidation, even cosmetic surgery. These days, it’s hard to think of a product, a service, a lifestyle choice, or even an identity that can’t be financed. Whatever our income level and aspiration, a consumer proposition lets us pursue experiences that deliver the biggest emotional or aspirational “return on investment”—a level of personal efficiency that we have embraced as avidly as the corporate world embraced computers and financial engineering.

But this new efficiency has had serious downsides—not least in the mismatch between the self-gratifying power available to consumers and consumers’ ability to manage it all. Humans, it’s safe to say, were not designed for a world of such easy gratification. Decades of research suggest that our brains, adapted for a prehistoric world of scarce resources and infrequent opportunities, are wired to prioritize immediate rewards and costs and to disregard rewards and costs that occur in the future. This natural bias against the future, so essential for our ancestors, is an Achilles’ heel in a modern economy built around immediate pleasure and deferred pain. Nearly every consumer proposition today, from credit to fast food and entertainment to social media and online shopping, capitalizes on our anti-future bias: in all cases, we’re provided immediate pleasure, while any costs, whether financial, physical, or emotional, are deferred so seamlessly that they vanish from our perception. It’s almost as if the evolving marketplace, once a force for personal discipline and deferred gratification (think of the Protestant work ethic) has flipped. Now, we’re urged to focus only on the present moment, and on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain in that moment. The notion of future consequences, so essential to our development as functional citizens, as adults, is relegated to the background, inviting us to remain in a state of permanent childhood.

Consider the rising number of consumer products that encourage gratification at someone else’s expense: the mobile technologies that encourage us to violate social norms—taking calls in theaters or posting videos of others’ misfortunes. Or the products that cater to our inner bully: the stereo subwoofers marketed for their capacity to deafen the entire neighborhood and the retina-searing high beams engineered, according to the ads, to fit “your aggressive driving style” (that is, to blind oncoming drivers). Or, for that matter, the SUVs that are not simply massive and overpowered but explicitly designed for an aggressive appearance, with tank-like panels and front ends modeled on predatory animals. Industry critics have argued that such features encourage SUV drivers to drive faster, causing more accidents and, thanks to the extra mass, wreaking more damage on other drivers. Yet this liability is part of the vehicles’ appeal—and part of automakers’ efforts to reach what Clotaire Rapaille, a marketing specialist who worked closely with Detroit, calls “the reptilian brain,” or the set of ancient neural programs that seek to maximize each individual’s survival and reproduction. The reptilian brain doesn’t care about the safety of other motorists. Rather, to the reptilian brain, every other motorist is a potential adversary. As Rapaille told journalist Keith Bradsher in a moment of appalling candor, “The reptilian [mind] says, ‘If there’s a crash, I want the other guy to die.’ ”

The SUV is an extreme example of the way the market encourages the pursuit of narrow, short-term self-interest. But it aptly illustrates both the aggressive character of our consumer culture and the defensiveness and even paranoia that emerge in a world of all-too-easy gratification. For to personalize is to reject the world “as is” and instead insist on bending it to our preferences, as if dominance were our only mode. But humans aren’t meant only for dominance. We’re also meant to adapt to something larger. Our big brains are specialized for cooperation and for compromise—with other individuals and with the broader world, which for most of history did not cater to our preferences or “likes.” Daily survival depended on our ancestors’ capacity to conform themselves and their expectations to the world as they found it. It was only by enduring adversity, disappointment, and delayed gratification that humans gained the strength, knowledge, and perspective that are essential to sustainable mastery. Many traditional cultures regarded adversity as inseparable from, and essential to, the formation of strong, self-sufficient people. Yet the modern conception of character now leaves little space for discomfort or real adversity. To the contrary, consumer culture in the Impulse Society does everything in its power to convince us that difficulty has no place in our lives (or belongs only in discrete, self-enhancing moments, such as really hard ab workouts). Discomfort, anxiety, suffering, depression, rejection, delays, uncertainty, or ambiguity—in the Impulse Society, these aren’t opportunities to mature and toughen or become. Instead, they represent errors and inefficiencies, and thus opportunities for correction—nearly always with more consumption and self-expression.

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So rather than wait a few days for a package, we have it overnighted. Or we pay for same-day service. And as the system gets faster at gratifying our desires, we’re less and less likely even to consider the possibility that we might find deeper satisfaction by enduring a delay or some other challenge to our personalized existence. The efficient consumer market cannot abide delay or adversity or, by extension, the strength of character that might be cultivated by delay or adversity. To the efficient market, character is itself an inefficiency to be squeezed from the system. Once some new increment of self-gratifying or self-promoting capability is made available—a faster phone, more powerful car, quicker delivery service—the assumption of the consumer culture is that it must be put to use, whatever the consequences. The intensity of our self-centeredness is now being determined not by conscious decision but by the market.

Such market-driven narcissism is a chilling confirmation of how the convergence of market and self have accelerated recently, as technology, ideology, and economics have supercharged the economy. That was one of the stories behind the Great Recession, which was the logical conclusion to the union of self and market—and demonstrated how this corrupting pattern of aggressive, narrow self-interest has jumped, like a virus, from the individual to our fundamental economic institutions.

This corruption is most evident in the corporate emphasis on short-term profits and share price. Because share price is heavily influenced by a company’s quarterly earnings, today’s supremely motivated managers (who now receive more than half their compensation in shares) go to ever-greater lengths to boost “quarterlies”—even to the point of hurting their companies’ long-term prospects. That short-termism played a part in the rising incidence of accounting fraud: from 1992 to 2005, the number of U.S. firms issuing earnings “restatements”—essentially, admissions that previously reported earnings were bogus—jumped from six a year to nearly 1,200 a year.

More damaging, however, are the entirely legal strategies to boost share price. As business learned long ago, one of the fastest ways to lift quarterly earnings is to cut costs, and since labor is always the largest cost, employees have borne much of the pain of the shareholder revolution and the rush for capital efficiency. Where company managers in the postwar era followed what economist William Lazonick calls a “retain and reinvest” strategy—plowing a large share of corporate profits back into the company via new facilities and higher wages—their post-1970s counterparts have hewed to a strategy of “downsize-and-distribute.” That is, today’s managers cut everything possible and pass along the savings to shareholders (and themselves) in the form of higher dividends and faster stock price appreciation. And if such a harsh strategy began as a legitimate effort to squeeze out postwar corporate waste and inefficiency, it has since become the standard way for executives to show the stock market that they do whatever is necessary to keep share prices high—even if it means upending the economy. Efficiency, says Lazonick, has become a socially acceptable rationalization for giving senior managers “totally free rein to get rid of the labor force and make other changes that [previously] would have been politically difficult—and get paid handsomely for doing it.”

Lazonick’s point underscores the economic paradox at the heart of the Impulse Society. The historic drive for better efficiencies—more output at a lower cost—has been inseparable from human progress. But efficiency has also become an ideology, imposing serious social costs on everything from income inequality to the dysfunction of our politics to the narcissism of our popular culture and private lives. Even as our “returns to capital” soar, our social returns are falling toward zero, and with them our prospects for a stable middle class or long-term prosperity.

What emerges is a massive and accelerating feedback loop, in which narrow self-interest, corporate or individual, undermines prosperity and fosters economic and social insecurity, which then encourages even more narrowly self-serving behavior. Day by day, there seem to be fewer reasons to follow the rules or think beyond oneself or the present moment. Not so long ago, we told our children that success required sustained effort, a willingness to delay gratification, and the capacity to control impulses. Children today, however, see their patient, hard-working parents and grandparents tossed aside like old furniture—while investment bankers and reality TV stars seem to easily make huge amounts of money. Little wonder that cheating is now endemic in high school and college. Or that college and high school kids now routinely film themselves in extraordinarily compromising situations in the hopes of converting millions of “views” into megabucks. Ask a 20-year-old how to get rich, says Keith Campbell, a psychologist and expert on the subject of narcissism, and you’ll get three answers: “‘I can either be famous on reality TV, or I can go start a dot-com company and sell it to Google in about a week, or I can go work for Goldman Sachs and just steal money from old people.’ I mean, those are the three models of wealth. There just isn’t a good model of hard work getting you somewhere anymore.”

In an ideal world, our social institutions temper our myopic, narrowly self-serving reflexes. That has been the script for most of human history. Society’s taboos, customs, and institutional arrangements, such as family, marriage, capitalism, and democracy, have discouraged impulsiveness in favor of long-term commitment or investment. But today, these institutional bulwarks are under the same myopic spell as individuals are. Bottom-line capitalism squeezes out socially responsible commerce as inefficient. Community and family are undermined by our consumer culture of individual gratification. Worse, our political system, the traditional arbiter between public and private interests, has been colonized by the same bottom-line impulse. Political parties boil their philosophies down into extreme brands designed to provoke target audiences and score quick wins. Voters are encouraged to see politics as another venue for personalized consumption. We’ve lost the idea that politics is the means to build consensus and an opportunity to participate in something larger than ourselves.

We know the result: a national political culture more divided and dysfunctional than any in living memory. All but gone are centrist statesmen capable of bipartisan compromise. A democracy once capable of ambitious, historic ventures can barely keep government open and seems powerless to deal with challenges like debt reduction or immigration, which Washington should be grappling with but isn’t.

Where do we go from here? How do we revive an economy, a culture, and a collective future with people and institutions seemingly locked in the pursuit of ever-narrower self-interest?

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Paradoxically, it is in our dysfunctional political realm where we can glimpse a way forward. Consider the unlikely promise of younger Americans, who for all their impulsiveness and reputed disengagement from formal politics show signs of coming alive as a political force. Surveys find that although Millennials don’t vote nearly as regularly as their older peers, they are more actively involved in other ways (such as volunteering) and are far less enamored of their elders’ extreme politics. It isn’t just the young who are tired of our current political atmosphere. After years of partisan gridlock, we may be witnessing the emergence of a new middle. Recent surveys show large numbers of voters, Republican, Democratic, and independent, who agree on a range of issues—from abortion rights and background gun checks to the minimum wage and the separation of church and state. Although these new centrists hardly vote as one, notes Kathleen Parker, a right-of-center columnist at The Washington Post, they “share a disdain for ideological purity.” And if our political leaders are not ready to repudiate rigid ideology, they are painfully aware of voters’ growing impatience. Since the 2012 election, when Tea Party extremists dragged down the Republican Party and then shut down the government, many mainstream Republicans have become desperate to move the party’s brand back toward the political center.

In the aftermath of the 2013 government shutdown, it became possible to see another kind of politics. After months of partisanship brinksmanship, lawmakers were forced to step back, however briefly, from the short-term playbook and craft some small but crucial compromise funding bills. No one expected the peace to last—the discord machine was merely idling before the 2014 midterms. (Just ask Eric Cantor.) But it was enough to show that what political players need, first and foremost, is a way to make space between themselves and reflexive politics—space to think, to deliberate, to choose a course of action rather than having one dictated by the momentum and algorithms of impulse politics.

In that brief moment, Washington, capital city of the Impulse Society, was showing the rest of us how that society might be disarmed. On a purely political level, it was possible to see how lawmakers might, by demonstrating even modest bipartisanship, begin to chip away at the cynicism that now encourages self-centered behavior among voters. One could imagine how even a single political success story—real campaign finance reform, say, or meaningful financial regulation—might inspire voters and energize a broader reform movement, both inside and outside politics, to replace our craving for immediate self-gratification with the more deliberate, community-minded attitude that so many of us say we want.

And the shutdown’s aftermath offered another, more fundamental lesson: how important it is to stand up to the forces of the Impulse Society—to push back against the momentum and values of a bottom-line culture so that a more deliberate, human set of values can again flourish.

A revolt against the values of the Impulse Society is already under way. In almost any community, you can find people working to separate themselves from a system that puts efficiency ahead of other values. It might be the household down the street that unplugs its smartphones and social networks to reclaim some family time. It might be the Wall Street trader who quits to become a math teacher. Or the political junkie who swears off Fox or Daily Kos because the media echo chamber is destroying his or her belief in democracy. And it’s people like Brett Walker, setting themselves free from the digital underworld. This uprising against the Impulse Society may be undeclared, but it’s happening anywhere people have recognized that they are losing something essential and irreplaceable.

Yes, such efforts have thus far been halting, disparate, and disorganized, thwarted by inertia and a fear of change. We don’t want to lose the rewards the Impulse Society lavishes us with—the steady upgrades from one level of gratification to the next. And, certainly, we fear trying something different in an economy that has become punitive—a wariness that afflicts our entire culture, from the lone shopworker afraid to leave a soul-crushing job to CEOs unwilling to offend their shareholders. Some of this is simple pragmatism, but there is also a large element of capitulation: many of us have grudgingly accepted that everything happening today is the logical, inevitable outcome of an efficient socioeconomic evolution that, by definition, is producing the maximum possible good. It’s as if we have convinced ourselves that the Impulse Society is what social progress looks like now.

But such a conclusion is manifestly and demonstrably false. Other possible economic outcomes exist, with different social and cultural consequences. We could point to alternative models in northern Europe and parts of Asia—Germany, say, or Singapore—where societies have different expectations for their economic systems—and less tolerance for the excesses and indignities Americans seem to regard as unavoidable. For that matter, Americans need look no further than our own history to see how a people can choose to make the economy produce more of the essential outputs—transportation infrastructure, say, or energy research or education—that are necessary for individuals and for society as a whole. Conservatives often dismiss such alternative economic scenarios, whether from abroad or from our own past, as case studies in liberal overreach and unwarranted government intrusion into the marketplace—and these complaints are not entirely undeserved. “Commanding” the economy has risks. But the basic argument—that it is possible and therefore necessary to take steps to produce more sustainable, equitable, humane economic outcomes—is neither flawed nor particularly liberal.

From the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, it was understood that “commercial society,” as Adam Smith called capitalism, needed constant prodding to ensure that its massive efficiencies benefited as wide a public as possible. As Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” Today, conservatives routinely invoke Smith and his invisible hand to argue for unfettered markets. But Smith recognized that markets needed occasional fettering: he favored, among other things, a progressive tax on the wealthy and, especially, hefty regulation of finance to prevent the consolidation of economic power in the hands of the few. Such regulatory intrusions, Smith readily acknowledged, were “in some respect a violation of natural liberty” of bankers and others with economic power. But this measured reduction in the economic power of the few was essential if a nation truly wanted to protect “the security of the whole society.” As Dutch economic essayist Thomas Wells puts it, “Commercial society was for Smith an ethical project whose greatest potential benefits had to be struggled for.” The success of that project, Wells notes, “was not predetermined, but had to be worked for.” The question is, toward what end? What is the “output” we hope to achieve from a post-Impulse economy and how might we begin to get there?

Since the end of the Cold War, it has been unthinkable to call for any alternative to capitalism, or even to imagine that such an alternative might exist. But shouldn’t we at least retain the prerogative to choose the sort of capitalism we want? Or to demand that our capitalism produce things of real value and be capable of sustaining a society that is equitable and deliberate? We are rightly skeptical of the heavy-handed, top-down government style in China, Brazil, India, and Indonesia. But these societies, at the very least, have tried to make their economies take them in specific directions, as opposed to simply following the ideology of efficiency. More fundamentally, they have defined economic success and wealth in social terms. One needn’t agree with those terms to recognize that our terms—the way we measure progress in much of the First World—are no longer sustainable. We badly need a new measure for economic success that goes beyond earnings per share.

What are we waiting for? Brett Walker, the former digital junkie, saved himself by going clean—by breaking away from the continuous gratifications of the gaming economy long enough to discover that he was happier without that degree of self-indulgence. Perhaps we should take note. Like Walker, our society has let the expectation of self-serving gratification drive us into a social and economic crisis so deep we haven’t yet recovered. But unlike Walker, we still haven’t broken free. To the contrary, our solution has been to revive the same self-centered economy that caused us such grief in the first place, and will only do so again.

But we needn’t stick to that plan. Were we serious about interrupting our self-driven downward spiral, we would start by recognizing the limits—social and personal as well as economic—of an ideology that prioritizes immediate gratification and efficient returns over all other values. We’ve made these sorts of shifts before. Not too long ago, our society took on large, complicated problems, such as economic depression and racial injustice, which required collective discipline, deferred gratification, and long-term commitment. We can certainly do so again. In some respects, the challenge we face today is more difficult. But the alternative is no longer an option.

Paul Roberts is the author of The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification, from which this essay has been adapted.

● NEWSLETTER

Dr. Danielle Dowling

Why instant gratification is good for you.

I don’t understand why instant gratification has gotten a bad reputation.   Personally, I’m all for it.

Why would you want to delay gratification?  

Now, by no means am I suggesting throwing your morals, manners and wisdom out the window but if you can keep these in tact I highly encourage you to do whatever you must to feel good and gratified in the moment.

This might be as miniscule as taking three minutes at your desk in the morning to do nothing but sip on a tea and breath into the day. Maybe you find a window and stare out it for a couple minutes letting your brain simmer down. Dessert first! Splurging on that new coral lipstick that costs too much.  Maybe instant gratification is actively choosing a more empowering thought and dismissing fear. Perhaps it’s  taking your lunch break to sneak off to the gym for a 30 minute run or making that bigger than big commitment.  Maybe you quit. Or maybe you begin.

The point is–instant gratification doesn’t make you a selfish, irresponsible individual.  You can absolutely be an accountable and reliable person to those around you while creating instant satisfaction for yourself.

Satisfaction can make life easier—-for everyone! Happiness via instant gratification can build motivation and momentum. It keeps you plugged in to an electric currant of creativity, stamina and strength.

When we don’t deprive ourselves of what what feels good in the moment we pro-actively fill our emotional, spiritual and physical reserves for future work that will require heaps of energy, focus and discipline.

Go Indulge in some instant gratification today! It will fuel your fire.

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A Brief Guide to Overcoming Instant Gratification

By leo babauta.

It’s no secret that we live in the Age of Instant gratification.

That’s not news. But Paul Roberts has written an excellent essay at The American Scholar looking at the breadth of this phenomena on our society – it’s a must read.

A sample quote from Roberts’ essay:

‘The notion of future consequences, so essential to our development as functional citizens, as adults, is relegated to the background, inviting us to remain in a state of permanent childhood.’

And while he concludes that we need to change as a society, not just individuals, I’d like to show a path for individual change that might highlight a larger path for us as a whole.

This is a personal guide to overcoming the instant gratification to which we’ve all grown accustomed.

Why? What’s wrong with instant gratification – isn’t it true that You Only Live Once and that Life is Meant to Be Enjoyed?

Yes, life is meant to be enjoyed, but perhaps not wasted. Let’s take a look at a couple different ways of living to see what I mean.

The first way is Instant Gratification: pleasurable food, the riches of the Internet, video games, TV, drink, online shopping … anything we want, anytime we want it.

No limits, no restraints. This first way leads to debt, clutter, bad health, distractions, mindlessness. I’ve lived it, and it took me a long time to climb out of it.

The second way of living is the opposite: eat simple food in moderation, enjoy the Internet but with limits so that we can focus on important work, get away from TV and computers once in awhile to enjoy nature and being active and exercising, shopping less and having less possessions, finding focus and being mindful. It’s not that we don’t indulge in the treats of the first way, but we do it with a little restraint, and consciousness.

This second way leads to simplicity, health and fitness, focus, achievement, mindfulness, appreciation for all the gifts of life.

The first way is the result of the childish mind that we all have. The second way is the way of mindfulness and consciousness.

How to Overcome Instant Gratification

If the first way sound perfectly fine to you, there’s no need to read on. But if you’re interested in a bit of conscious living, a more mindful life, simplicity and health … how can we cope with the urge to be instantly gratified?

Here are the simple steps:

• Watch the urges . We all have urges, to check on email or social media, to eat something sweet or fried, to procrastinate or find distractions. They arise in all of us, but that doesn’t mean we need to act on them. The first step is to see the urges arise. What I’ve done is carried a pencil and piece of paper around, and put little tally marks on the paper each time I’ve had an urge. It’s a great tool for mindfulness.
• Delay . Instead of acting on the urge right when it arises, pause. Don’t act right away. Put some space between the urge and your action. Let your heartbeat return to normal, your breathing become a bit deeper. Calm down.
• Make a conscious decision . If you decide to indulge in a sweet, that’s perfectly fine … but do it consciously, not just following every whim and urge. Decide that this is a healthy thing for you to do, that you can afford it, that it’s a compassionate act for your body. Each decision is best made consciously, instead of just trying to gratify our desires.
• Learn over time . There will be many times when you give in to your urges – that’s OK. We all do it. There’s nothing wrong with giving in sometimes, but the key is to see how that makes you feel afterward, and learn whether the decision was a good one or not. The next time the decision comes up, think back to the previous time, and make a conscious decision not to make yourself feel greasy and bloated (for example), if that’s how you felt last time. Over time, your decisions will get better if you pay attention to how they turn out.
• Enjoy the moment without following the urge . Life is meant to be enjoyed, but there are different ways to enjoy it. You can eat that donut, or you can breathe, pass on it, and mindfully enjoy a handful of berries. Both are delicious! Both can be done mindfully. One is healthier. Either decision can lead to equal happiness if done mindfully and consciously.

And that’s the simple guide. It’s not an easy method by any means, but I can attest that living in a more conscious and mindful manner is a wonderful way of being. And the benefits I’ve found have been too numerous to name.

May your day be lovely and mindful.

Posted: 09.15.2014

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Actionable Tips To Abandon Instant Gratification

Humans are hard-wired to prefer instant gratification to delayed gratification from an evolutionary perspective, and many elements of today’s consumerist society reinforce these behaviors. However, indulging in this desire too frequently or in certain ways can cause problems for people. Over time, repeated gravitation toward instant outcomes can lead to over-prioritizing short-term validation in favor of long-term success. If you’re looking to manage or temper your tendency to pursue instant gratification, the tips we’ll explore here may help.

A cultural history of instant gratification

The concept of instant gratification is embedded deep within the culture of the United States. We are used to having what we want, when we want it—but this wasn’t always the case. Let’s briefly explore how this change that prizes immediate satisfaction happened over the past few generations. 

The rise of consumerism

The rise of consumerism can be traced back to the post-World War II United States. After the war ended, there was a wealth of goods available for consumption at prices that were more affordable than ever before. This factor, combined with an increase in commercial marketing, helped create a consumerist culture that promoted the idea that products were associated with happiness and status. As a result, people increasingly began to seek material goods to fulfill their desires for pleasure and safety. By consuming these goods, one could achieve little instant gratification in fulfilling a desire, the ability to purchase a variety of items without having to wait.

The rise of technology

As technology advanced, so did our hunger for instant gratification. With the invention of the internet came a whole new realm of possibilities catering to the need for immediate gratification among internet users. E-commerce in particular enabled people to purchase and receive whatever they wanted quickly in web pages, without ever leaving their homes. Eventually, streaming services began to offer the same option for on-demand entertainment as a quick fix for boredom. The rise of social media platforms further supported this trend, enabling people to get a sense of validation from their peers in seconds. Posting a photo on social media can results in instant gratification in the form of “likes” and comments. These advances in technology furthered bypassed the need to delay gratification.

Instant gratification in US culture today

Today, the speed of obtaining rewards—from food and products to entertainment and validation—seems to be a top cultural priority. While this ever-increasing trend has some benefits, it has also normalized an over-reliance on instant gratification in contrast to delayed gratification, which can be problematic. For example, younger generations who have grown up completely immersed in this culture report having greater trouble controlling their  “emotional spending” —typically consisting of online shopping to treat themselves when happy or comfort themselves when sad—which can lead to financial difficulties and debt in the long term. 

This element of the culture that undermines delaying gratification could make it challenging to avoid immediate temptations. It may also be at least partially to blame for increased rates of addiction to behaviors or substances, particularly among young people. While planning for the distant future may not be a priority for many people, including young people, buying something one cannot afford, such as a new car, can complicate one's life. The prevalence of instant gratification can make wise decision-making more difficult.

The science behind instant gratification

When we work hard and wait patiently for some kind of payoff, our brains are engaged in an intricate reward-system process. However, studies have shown that our brains are also  hardwired for short-term pleasure . This means that there are various mechanisms and systems in place in our brains and bodies that make us more inclined to choose instant gratification, including the following.

According to the pleasure principle in psychology,  humans are innately prone to seek  immediate pleasure and avoid displeasure, a form of tension that results from not having our immediate desires met. As the pleasure principle explains, we are wired to want pleasure and avoid pain, as pain may cause emotional distress. However, we have the ability to experience pleasure in both short-term and long-term goals. Some studies have  examined the relationship between short-term memory, higher intelligence, and the ability to delay  gratification. They suggest a correlation between our cognitive capacity to self-control and intelligence when evaluating instant and delayed gratification. It links higher intelligence with the ability to delay gratification to achieve future outcomes. Although delaying gratification for a long time is often challenging, it may result in larger rewards. This connection is sought to be useful to understand the factors involved when people partake in behaviors that may bring negative effects, such as substance abuse and the inability to save money. 

The dopamine system

When faced with a choice between an immediate reward (e.g., a candy bar) or a delayed reward (e.g., money saved for later), most people are likely to choose the former because it feels good immediately. This tendency towards short-term rewards stems from the brain’s dopamine system, which is largely responsible for feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.  

The limbic system

The limbic system also plays a significant role in controlling emotions and behaviors related to seeking pleasure. If a reward doesn’t reach us immediately or takes longer than we think it should, our limbic system kicks into gear and compels us toward more immediate rewards instead. The evolutionary reason for this is likely based on survival mechanisms. In the early days of humanity, food and other resources had to be taken advantage of when they were available to ensure survival.

Hedonism theory

When looking to explain this tendency, some also turn to hedonism theory. It proposes that humans have an innate desire for pleasure— hedonism —which drives us to seek out activities or experiences that provide immediate gratification over those that involve a delay of gratification, even if they have potential negative consequences.

For example, let's say you want a new phone but don't have enough money saved up yet. You could go ahead and buy it anyway using a credit card, even though you know this will mean paying high interest rates later. Although you may be aware of the potential negative repercussions of buying a new phone now, your innate hedonistic nature might still win out because it may compel you to seek an immediate reward. Without a view towards future long-term gain, it may be challenging to avoid delaying immediate satisfaction.

Benefits of resisting the desire for instant gratification

Studies suggest that people who practice delayed gratification are more likely to lead  healthier lives overall . Researchers report that the benefits of this practice may include getting better, more restful sleep at night, exercising more regularly, making healthier eating choices, and experiencing lower levels of stress and anxiety. If you’re looking to build up your tolerance for resisting instant gratification, know that it’s possible to do so with practice and the right strategies. If you can find the time to work on your tendency toward instant gratification, you may experience many advantages in life.

Tips for resisting the desire for instant gratification

Since we’re wired for instant gratification, resisting it in every instance is not necessarily practical. Plus, indulging in this desire in small ways from time to time may represent a form of self-care, comfort, and even motivation to work toward our goals. However, as outlined previously, over-indulging in this tendency can lead to negative consequences. Success and happiness sometimes require long-term planning and avoiding indulging in the moment, so learning to manage this tendency may benefit you over time. To do so, you might try some of the following tips.

Recognize your urges

Sometimes, we can get stuck in a cycle of chasing instant gratification partly because we aren’t being mindful of the fact that we’re doing so. Especially in our modern world, it’s easy to feel an urge and fulfill it instantly. To learn to manage this tendency, it may help you to learn how to recognize when an urge arises.  Cultivating a mindfulness practice  is one way to do this, since many are centered on developing a nonjudgmental awareness of your thoughts as they arise. 

Learning to pause and recognize the urge to check your phone, have a snack, or turn on a show right away can help you become more aware of what your desires are and where they’re coming from, giving you a starting point to begin to control how you respond to your drive for instant gratification. One study found this to be an effective tactic for those with substance use issues. Researchers report that “acting with awareness and observing were associated with  higher delaying gratification ; which in turn was associated with lower quantity of use, which in turn was associated with fewer consequences”.

Note the consequences

Again, indulging in instant gratification isn’t always a bad thing, but it can sometimes lead to undesirable consequences—especially when it happens repeatedly over the long term. Next time you find yourself engaging in an activity that brings you instant gratification, you might simply take note of how you feel afterward. If you indulged in a food that you know doesn’t agree with you, you might feel ill. If you bought something online you know you can’t afford, you might feel guilty or concerned about your finances. Remembering—and perhaps even writing down—these outcomes can help you weigh your options when deciding whether to give in to instant gratification or delay it the next time. Even if you still do from time to time, you’ll be making a more mindful, informed choice.

Implement small delays

Even delaying yourself before fulfilling the urge for gratification of some kind can be a powerful step. For example, you might wait a few hours before opening a package that arrives in the mail or consciously wait longer than you feel compelled to to check your phone. Even small acts of defying the urge to receive rewards instantly can help you gain more control over these types of actions. 

Finding yourself over indulging? Connect with a licensed therapist

How therapy can help.

Speaking with a therapist is another way you can learn to gain greater control over your impulses. A trained counselor can help you uncover any underlying issues that may make you turn to certain instant-gratification activities, and they can assist you in developing healthy habits as well. If you’re interested in pursuing this kind of support, you can locate a provider in your local area or sign up for online therapy. Those who are interested in a more available, cost-effective option may find online therapy to be of particular interest. 

With a  virtual therapy platform  like BetterHelp, you can get matched with a licensed therapist who you can meet with from the comfort of home or anywhere you have an internet connection—and all for a cost that’s comparable to most insurance co-pays. Research suggests that in-person and virtual therapy  can offer similar benefits  in many cases. That means most people can select whichever option is most convenient and comfortable for them.

Humans are hard-wired for instant gratification for evolutionary reasons. However, in the modern day, indulging in our desire for instant gratification too often can result in negative consequences. The tips on this list can help you learn to manage these impulses.

Frequently asked questions

What is the need for immediate gratification what is an example of immediate gratification what is the meaning of gratification of needs what are the 4 types of gratification what is instant gratification also known as what's the word for instant gratification what are the 5 needs of uses and gratification how do you deal with gratification what are the 5 domains of gratification is instant gratification happiness, what behavior is self-gratification what are the modes of gratification what things give gratification.

How does instant gratification affect society? Is instant gratification a problem?

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27 Instant Gratification Examples (And How to Resist!)

Instant gratification is the desire to experience pleasure or fulfillment without delay or deferment. It generally involves seeking a quick and easy solution rather than one that requires effort or is delayed. 

Psychologists argue that instant gratification is a behavior driven by impulsivity and short-term thinking, where the pleasure of satisfaction and instant dopamine hit outweighs any risks or consequences that may occur. It can be seen in many aspects of our lives.

For example, shopping is a common form of instant gratification. We make impulse purchases to satisfy our hunger or desire for something new, with little consideration for the cost or potential consequences. 

So, instant gratification brings people pleasure at the moment and can offer temporary relief from stress or boredom, but it also has its drawbacks. 

Definition of Instant Gratification

In psychology, instant gratification is the desire for an immediate reward or pleasure without any delay or postponement. It refers to a preference for short-term benefits over long-term rewards and a tendency to act impulsively to get what we want right away. 

In other words, instant gratification is “the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit to obtain a less rewarding but more immediate effect” (Oliviera, 2019, p. 242).

It’s a fundamental human impulse to want great things and to desire them NOW. It’s even been called our “instant culture”—where we’re quick to forget the value of investing in better things over time.

Instant gratification is driven by a need for immediate satisfaction and pleasure, where the rewards or benefits are experienced in the present moment. 

For example, today, marketing and advertising strategies of popular brands often encourage such behavior, promising a quick and easy solution to our problems (Patel, 2014). 

Simply put, instant gratification is the desire to take a shortcut or bypass any obstacles to get what we want right away, regardless of any potential risks or long-term consequences of our actions. 

Examples of Instant Gratification

• Impulse shopping : Shopping can become an impulsive habit, providing people with a quick fix for their cravings without any thought of the associated cost or potential repercussions. For example, buying something expensive, we can ill-afford or impulsively buy items online without researching the product. 
• Eating fast food : Fast food is the epitome of instant gratification; it’s fast, effortless, and offers pleasure immediately. When you go out for a quick bite, it’s easy to forget about the health consequences that come with eating such food regularly.
• Winning on the slots : Slot machines presents an effortless chance to accumulate money quickly and effortlessly—without any labor or exertion. In reality, the odds are often stacked against the player, and it can lead to addiction or financial ruin.
• Social media : Scrolling through Instagram and admiring your friends’ posts can be enjoyable at the moment, but unless you have aspirations to become an influencer, this is simply time wasted . Liking memorable photos and sharing stories about what you ate for lunch may seem harmless enough…but think twice before hitting that ‘post’ button!
• Binge-watching TV : Binge-watching television is an example of instant gratification. Viewers can get lost in a show and experience satisfaction without waiting for the next episode. Consequently, they can become addicted and neglect their responsibilities or personal relationships.
• Taking mood-enhancing substances: Taking mood-enhancing substances is also a form of instant gratification, as it provides an immediate escape from reality and relieves stress or boredom. Over time, this can lead to physical and psychological dependence.
• Playing video games : Through conquering levels and succeeding at tasks, video games offer players an instantaneous surge of satisfaction. Immediate gratification is one of the reasons why these types of interactive titles are so enjoyable and appealing to many people.
• Sk ip ping your workout : Oftentimes, people use the path of least resistance and may be tempted to skip their workouts. However, this decision is nothing more than a means of obtaining instant gratification as it denies them the opportunity to put in hard work that produces lasting results.
• Extreme sports : Adrenaline junkies often engage in dangerous activities to experience instant gratification, such as skydiving or bungee jumping. While this may provide a rush of adrenaline at the moment, it is important to recognize the potential risks associated with these activities.
• Procrastination : Ultimately, procrastination is a quintessential form of instant gratification: it lets you momentarily evade the duty at hand and provides an immediate sense of respite from any stress. However, this prevents you from completing the task on time and can lead to further issues. 

Additional Examples

• Using credit cards for unnecessary purchases
• Ordering takeout instead of cooking
• Eating junk food
• Checking your email or phone constantly
• Surfing the internet aimlessly
• Taking a nap instead of working
• Buying unnecessary gadgets
• Overindulging and not sharing
• Cheating on an exam
• Staying up late watching TV
• Taking shortcuts
• Gossiping or spreading rumors
• Daydreaming
• Lying to avoid conflict
• Giving into temptation
• Hitting snooze on your alarm
• Bribing your child to stop crying with candy

Instant Gratification vs. Delayed Gratification

In contrast to instant gratification’s quick and easy solution, delayed gratification requires patience and hard work to achieve desired results. 

Instant gratification is a form of pleasure that comes without effort or waiting. Unfortunately, it often leads to reckless decisions and can be detrimental in the long run because it denies the opportunity to build character or gain satisfaction from hard work (Nakayama & Wan, 2021). 

On the other hand, delayed gratification rewards you with a feeling of success once you have accomplished a difficult task. It teaches discipline, resilience, and perseverance—all of which lead to long-lasting happiness and satisfaction (Hoerger et al., 2011). 

Ultimately, delayed gratification is the more rewarding option of the two as it offers lasting results and a greater sense of accomplishment. It is also the healthier choice for avoiding immediate, short-lived pleasures. 

Marshmallow Test Experiment and Instant Gratification

The Marshmallow Test is an iconic experiment by psychologist Walter Mischel to measure the concept of delayed gratification (Watts et al., 2018) .

The experiment involved offering young children a marshmallow, with the option of having another one later if they waited for it.

By being able to abstain from consuming the marshmallow immediately, participants were rewarded with an additional one – a testament to their capacity for deferred gratification in order to receive greater benefits later on.

This experiment is particularly relevant to instant gratification, as it showcases the power of restraint in achieving greater rewards.

Consequences of Instant Gratification

On the surface, instant gratification may seem like a sensible trade-off of short-term joy for an insignificant delay. Nonetheless, upon closer examination, it becomes evident that its cumulative effect is immense.

When people succumb to instant gratification, they often settle for smaller rewards in the present instead of delaying their satisfaction and reaping greater benefits later.

Here are five common effects of instant gratification:

• Poor decision-making : Instant gratification results in poor decision-making because it encourages people to take the easy way out without considering the potential consequences of their actions. 
• Procrastination : When faced with an unpleasant task, people are more likely to resort to instant gratification to delay dealing with the task. It leads to procrastination and can result in missed deadlines. 
• Impact on relationships : Instant gratification can also negatively affect relationships as people may prioritize their desire for immediate pleasure over the long-term needs of their partner or family. 
• Impact on health : While instant gratification can temporarily boost energy and pleasure, the effects are usually short-lived and can have detrimental effects on our physical health. 
• Unsatisfactory long-term outcomes : By choosing instant gratification over delayed one, people miss out on the opportunity to better their lives in the long run. They cannot reap the benefits of hard work and dedication, leaving them with dissatisfaction. 

How to Overcome Instant Gratification

Overcoming the temptation of instant gratification is difficult but not impossible. So, f inding a balance between instant gratification and the best choice for the future is essential .

Here are five tips to help you break the habit:

• Set goals : Setting goals is important for staying focused on the end goal and limiting the chances of succumbing to instant gratification. Still, it is more advisable to set smaller goals that are easy to achieve as they will encourage you to continue working.
• Empathize with your future self : Imagine what your future self would want you to do in the present. Thinking about how the current decision will impact your future is a great way to maintain focus and curb the urge to take shortcuts.
• Develop self-discipline : Developing self-discipline takes practice; start with small tasks and reward yourself for a well-done job. You will gradually build up your capacity to resist temptation and make better decisions by taking small steps.
• Stay away from triggers : Avoid situations that might tempt you to make decisions you may regret later. It could be anything from skipping a workout to spending too much money on unnecessary items. Identify your triggers and find ways to stay away from them.
• Seek support : It is always easier to resist temptation when you have the support of others. Ask for help from a trusted family member or friend when you feel like giving in to instant gratification. Having someone to talk to and vent to can get you back on track and make it easier to overcome the urge.

Instant gratification is a common problem that can lead to poor decision-making and unsatisfactory long-term outcomes. It means sacrificing delayed gratification and the benefits it brings. 

The consequences of giving in to instant gratification can be detrimental, but it is possible to overcome this problem by developing self-discipline, setting goals, and seeking support from others. 

With enough determination and perseverance, it is possible to break the habit of instant gratification and make choices that bring greater rewards in the long run. 

Hoerger, M., Quirk, S. W., & Weed, N. C. (2011). Development and validation of the delaying gratification inventory.  Psychological Assessment ,  23 (3), 725–738. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023286

Nakayama, M., & Wan, Y. (2021). A quick bite and instant gratification: A simulated Yelp experiment on consumer review information foraging behavior.  Information Processing & Management ,  58 (1), 102391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102391

Oliveira, L. (2019).  Managing screen time in an online society . IGI Global.

Patel, N. (2014, June 24).  The psychology of instant gratification and how it will revolutionize your marketing approach . Entrepreneur. https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/the-psychology-of-instant-gratification-and-how-it-will/235088

Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the marshmallow test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes.  Psychological Science ,  29 (7), 1159–1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661

Viktoriya Sus (MA)

Viktoriya Sus is an academic writer specializing mainly in economics and business from Ukraine. She holds a Master’s degree in International Business from Lviv National University and has more than 6 years of experience writing for different clients. Viktoriya is passionate about researching the latest trends in economics and business. However, she also loves to explore different topics such as psychology, philosophy, and more.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

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The neural basis of delayed gratification

1 Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.

2 Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing 102206, China.

Hanqing Wang

3 Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.

4 School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China.

Sean Froudist-Walsh

Xiao-jing wang.

5 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai 200030, China.

6 School of Basic Medical Sciences, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100069, China.

Associated Data

Sustained ramping of dopaminergic activation helps individuals resist impulsivity and wait for a later but larger reward.

Balancing instant gratification versus delayed but better gratification is important for optimizing survival and reproductive success. Although delayed gratification has been studied through human psychological and brain activity monitoring and animal research, little is known about its neural basis. We successfully trained mice to perform a waiting-for-water-reward delayed gratification task and used these animals in physiological recording and optical manipulation of neuronal activity during the task to explore its neural basis. Our results showed that the activity of dopaminergic (DAergic) neurons in the ventral tegmental area increases steadily during the waiting period. Optical activation or silencing of these neurons, respectively, extends or reduces the duration of waiting. To interpret these data, we developed a reinforcement learning model that reproduces our experimental observations. Steady increases in DAergic activity signal the value of waiting and support the hypothesis that delayed gratification involves real-time deliberation.

INTRODUCTION

To optimize survival and reproductive success, animals need to balance instant gratification versus delayed but better gratification. Repeated exposure to instant gratification may disrupt this balance, thereby increasing impulsive decisions. These decisions contribute to numerous human disorders, such as addiction and obesity ( 1 , 2 ). Delayed gratification is an important process that balances time delay with increased reward ( 3 ). It is influenced by strengths in patience, willpower, and self-control ( 4 ). Psychologists and neuroscientists have long studied this important behavior through human psychological and brain activity assessments and rodent-based studies. Although the dopamine system has been implicated in delayed gratification, the precise neural activity of the dopamine system that allows better gratification has not been demonstrated. In addition, no studies to date have causally manipulated the dopamine system during delayed gratification tasks.

During a well-controlled delayed gratification task, an individual must balance the benefits versus risks of delay in receiving an available reward. The choice to continue waiting requires suppression of the constant temptation of an immediate reward, in favor of an enhanced reward in the future ( 3 , 5 , 6 ). Midbrain dopaminergic (DAergic) neurons are well known to play central roles in reward-related and goal-directed behaviors ( 7 – 12 ). Studies have revealed that DAergic activity signals spatial or operational proximity to distant rewards ( 7 , 13 , 14 ), which has been postulated to sustain or motivate goal-directed behaviors while resisting distractions. DAergic neurons play important roles in time judgment ( 15 ) and cost-benefit calculations, which are necessary for value-based decision-making ( 13 , 16 – 18 ).

We successfully trained mice to perform a waiting-for-water-reward delayed gratification task. Recording and manipulation of neuronal activities during this task allowed us to explore the cellular regulation of delayed gratification. We found that the activity of ventral tegmental area (VTA) DAergic neurons ramped up consistently while mice were waiting in place for rewards. Transient activation of DAergic neurons extended, whereas inhibition reduced the duration of the waiting period. Then, we adopted reinforcement learning (RL) computational models to predict and explain our experimental observations.

Mice can learn to wait for greater rewards by delayed gratification task training

First, we trained water-restricted mice to perform a one-arm foraging task (pretraining) in which delay did not result in an increased reward ( 19 ). The period in which the mouse remained in the waiting zone was defined as the waiting duration, and the time during which the mouse traveled from the waiting zone to reach the water reward was defined as the running duration ( Fig. 1A , left). When the mouse exited the waiting zone and licked the water port in the reward zone, it could receive a 10-μl water drop regardless of the time spent in the waiting zone [ Fig. 1A , right (black line)]. During a week of training, the average waiting and running durations both significantly decreased from days 1 to 7 (day 1: waiting, 5.58 ± 0.63 s; running, 3.46 ± 0.28 s; P < 0.001; day 7: waiting, 1.99 ± 0.19 s; running, 1.28 ± 0.09 s; P < 0.001, n = 7 mice, Friedman test; Fig. 1, C to E , and movie S1). All mice learned the strategy of reducing durations of both waiting and running to maximize the reward rate (defined as microliters of water per second in a given trial; fig. S1C).

( A ) Left: Schematic of the delayed gratification task. Right: Relationship between reward volumes and waiting durations in the two behavioral tasks. ( B ) A plot of transistor-transistor logic signals for the chronological sequence of behavioral events in the tasks. ( C to E ). The waiting duration and running duration both decreased during the training process in the pretraining phase ( P < 0.001). ( F ) The distribution of waiting durations from the behavioral session on the last analyzed day (day 15, light red), revealing significantly longer waiting durations compared to those from day 1 (day 1: gray, n = 7 mice). ( G ) The distribution of running durations on days 1 and 15 did not differ with training. ( H ) Continuous training significantly increased the average waiting duration ( P < 0.001), whereas the training did not change the average running duration ( P = 0.97).

Next, we trained the same mice using a delayed gratification paradigm, where the size of the reward increased quadratically with time spent in the waiting zone [ Fig. 1A , right (green line)]. Over the next 3 weeks, this resulted in shifting the distributions of the waiting duration toward a longer wait. The averaged waiting period significantly increased from 2.76 ± 0.15 s on day 1 to 4.62 ± 0.30 s on day 15 ( P < 0.001, n = 7 mice, Friedman test; Fig. 1, F and H , and movie S2). Continuous training steadily increased the averaged waiting duration, whereas the training did not change the average running duration from 1.19 ± 0.13 s on day 1 to 1.24 ± 0.10 s on day 15 ( P = 0.97, n = 7 mice, Friedman test; Fig. 1, G and H ). The reward rate increased steadily, indicating that the mice were successfully learning to successfully delay gratification (fig. S1D).

The activity of VTA DAergic neurons increases steadily during the waiting period

To monitor the activity of VTA DAergic neurons during the delayed gratification task, we used fiber photometry to record the calcium signals in VTA DAergic neurons in freely moving mice for as long as 1 month ( Fig. 2, A to C ; optical fiber placement illustrated in fig. S2). On the first day of pretask training, the calcium signal rose rapidly upon reward and quickly reached a peak. A few days of training markedly reshaped the response pattern. Once the mice reentered the waiting zone, the activity of DAergic neurons started to rise and reached the highest level when the animal received a reward (fig. S3A).

( A ) Schematic of stereotaxic virus injection procedures. ( B ) Confocal images illustrating GCaMP6m expression in VTA TH + neurons. ( C ) A live recording trace (magenta) of Ca 2+ signal in VTA DAergic neurons and running speed (black) when the mouse was performing the delayed gratification task. Task events over time (top): The dashed vertical lines indicate waiting onset (blue), waiting termination (green), and reward onset (red). ( D ) The scaled Ca 2+ signals (magenta) and green fluorescent protein signal (green) curves of VTA DAergic neurons from the last day of pretraining and days in the delayed gratification task training (black, speed). ( E ) Waiting duration sorted ramping Ca 2+ signal data from one mouse during the delayed gratification task training (150 trials). ( F ) z -scored Δ F / F values at 0.5 s before exit were significantly different when the reward volumes were different (*** P < 0.001). ( G ) Averaged Ca 2+ signal curves with different outcomes from (E). ( H ) Shown separately for different trial stages (DAergic ramping periods) during the last week of training. There were no differences in the slope of the Ca 2+ signals between trials with different reward outcomes. NS, not significant. WPRE, Woodchuck Post-transcriptional Regulatory Element; PMT, PhotoMultiplier Tube; TH, Tyrosine Hydroxylase.

We next analyzed the activity of these same neurons in the mice as they learned the delayed gratification task. The recording traces showed that training gradually reshaped the pattern and time course of activity ( Fig. 2D ). The activity started to ramp up once the mice entered the waiting zone and then reached its highest level when they exited. To investigate carefully the dynamical properties of the ramping activity during waiting, we sorted the calcium signals from day 15 of one mouse by their length of waiting durations and plotted them with a heatmap ( Fig. 2E ). We divided trials according to the trial outcome (reward volume) and calculated the calcium signals while the mouse exited the waiting zone with different reward volumes. Our results showed that the z -scored calcium signals at 0.5 s before exit were significantly increased as reward volumes increased [ F = 24.67, P < 0.001, n = 7, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA); Fig. 2F ], but the mean signal curves followed similar trajectories regardless of trial outcome ( Fig. 2G ). Then, we calculated the slopes of signal curves with different outcomes over four time windows (0 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 6, and 6 to 8 s) by linear regression analysis. The slopes during the same time window did not differ significantly between reward groups (0 to 2 s: F = 0.10, P = 0.96; 2 to 4 s: F = 1.03, P = 0.38; 4 to 6 s; F = 1.00, P = 0.34, n = 7, one-way ANOVA; Fig. 2H ). We pooled and plotted the slopes of different waiting periods together and found that the activity curves kept rising steadily, almost saturating after 6 s from the time the mice entered the waiting zone. The ramp-up of DAergic activity became less variable with delayed gratification task training in our experimental data (fig. S4, A to D). All these results indicated that VTA DAergic neurons consistently ramp up their activity during waiting in as animals are trained in the delayed gratification task.

High-frequency spiking of VTA DAergic neurons sustains waiting in the delayed gratification task

Does tonic or phasic firing of DAergic neurons underlie the ramping calcium signal? To answer this, we conducted single unit recordings when mice were performing the delayed gratification task ( Fig. 3A ). A custom-made head plate was placed on the skull and affixed in place with dental cement. After recording, placements of recording electrodes were confirmed with electrolytic lesion inside VTA of all five mice ( Fig. 3B ). We found that 17 putative DAergic neurons displayed short bursts of firing during the waiting period ( Fig. 3C ). On trials in which the mice waited for a short duration, the firing rate was low throughout the waiting period ( Fig. 3, D to E ). On trials in which the mice waited for a long duration, the firing rate was initially low before increasing during the later waiting period ( Fig. 3, D to E ). We averaged peristimulus time histograms (PSTHs) of all trials to obtain a response curve ( n = 17 cells; Fig. 3F ). Similar to calcium signal, the response curve of firing rate noticeably ramped up with increased waiting time before reaching a plateau at around 4 s. To compare with the experimental calcium signal, we used a convolution algorithm to predict calcium responses trial by trial based on the firing rate of all 17 recorded cells ( Fig. 3G showed the predicted calcium responses from Fig. 3E ). The average of predicted calcium signal (Δ F / F %, 0.5 s before exiting from all trials) of all cells fit the measured calcium response ( z -scored Δ F / F , 0.5 s before exit from the last week of training) curve very well ( r = 0.982, Pearson correlation; Fig. 3H ). This analysis shows that the spiking activity of single DAergic neurons underlies the ramping calcium signal revealed by fiber photometry recording.

( A ) Schematic of single unit electrical recordings in the delayed gratification task. DAQ, Data Acquisition. ( B ) An example image showing the placement of electrode tips in VTA with an electrolytic lesion. ( C ) An example recording trace when a mouse performed a whole trial of the delayed gratification task. The waiting period was noted with a solid magenta line. ( D ) Raster plot of spikes trial by trial sorted by waiting duration of the delayed gratification task. ( E ) Three-dimensional PSTH plot for (D). ( F ) Average response curve during the waiting period ( n = 17 cells, each dashed line represents one cell). ( G ) Predicted calcium responses based on the convolution of the spike rate from (E) with a 0.1-s time bin. ( H ) The predicted calcium response curve (black) is based on the spiking response curves in (F), compared to the measured calcium response curve (blue line) ( r = 0.982, Pearson correlation).

Optogenetic manipulation of VTA DAergic activity alters the waiting durations in the delayed gratification task

To determine whether VTA DAergic activity controls performance in the delayed gratification task, we manipulated VTA DAergic neurons temporally using optogenetic tools in 20% of pseudorandomly chosen trials while the mice were waiting during the delayed gratification task ( Fig. 4, A to C ). Activating the VTA DAergic neurons shifted the cumulative probability distribution toward a longer waiting duration ( F = 12.93, P = 0.002, n = 6 mice, one-way ANOVA; Fig. 4D , blue), while inhibiting these same neurons shifted the distribution significantly in the opposite direction ( F = 7.76, P = 0.008, n = 6 mice, one-way ANOVA; Fig. 4E , yellow). The effects of optogenetic stimulation or inhibition on the cumulative probability distributions for waiting duration were only observed in the laser-on trials. In contrast, the laser-off trials, including those immediately after the laser-on trials treated as a single group, were not significantly different from the trials from the previous day ( P > 0.5; Fig. 4, D and E ). The optical manipulation did not influence the running durations in the delayed gratification task in mice that expressed Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) or enhanced Halorhodopsin 3.0 (eNpHR3.0) (fig. S5, A and B), nor did it change the waiting duration distribution of mice that expressed mCherry in DAergic neurons in delayed gratification tasks (fig. S6, A and B). To rule out the possibility of optogenetic manipulation–induced memory, we performed a random place preference test with the same stimulation dosage. Neither activating nor inhibiting VTA DAergic neurons significantly changed the transient waiting duration or pattern in the location in which the laser was activated in any of the tested mice (fig. S5, E to H) or in the mCherry expressing controls (fig. S6, C to F).

( A ) Left: Schematic of stereotaxic virus injection and surgical procedure. Right: Behavioral events and optogenetic manipulation protocol. ( B ) Images showing ChR2-mCherry expression (top) and whole-cell recordings showing action potentials evoked by 10-Hz laser flash sequences (50 flashes) in VTA TH + neurons (bottom). ( C ) Images showing eNpHR3.0-mCherry expression (top) and whole-cell recordings showing that evoked action potentials were inhibited by continued 589-nm laser in VTA TH + neurons (bottom). ( D ) Cumulative probabilities of waiting durations. The waiting durations of optogenetically activated trials were significantly increased ( P = 0.002, blue) relative to those of the previous day’s trials (gray). Inset: Bar graph of the normalized waiting durations showing that the average waiting duration of unstimulated trials ( P = 0.96, magenta) did not differ from those of the previous day’s trials or the next trials following photoactivation ( P = 0.63, green). ( E ) The same experimental configuration as in (D) but VAT TH + neurons were optogenetically inhibited by a yellow laser. Optogenetic inhibition decreased the waiting duration ( P = 0.008, yellow), whereas there were no differences between other trials ( P > 0.5). ** P < 0.01.

An RL model suggests that ramping up VTA DAergic activity signals the value of waiting for delayed gratification

How does a mouse manage to wait longer for a larger reward while ignoring smaller but more immediate reward options? We propose two models of behavioral scenarios that exemplify possible strategies a mouse may implement to achieve extended waiting performances: (i) setting a goal of expected waiting duration before the initiation of waiting or (ii) continuously deliberating during the waiting period. According to the first hypothesis (i), we modeled an RL agent that keeps time until a predetermined moment has passed ( Fig. 5A , Decision Ahead); according to (ii), we modeled a second RL agent that continuously balances the values of waiting versus leaving to control the decision to wait or to leave for the reward. To implement these models, we used a version of the state-action-reward-state-action (SARSA) algorithm with a series of states ( Fig. 5A , Continuous Deliberation; see Materials and Methods) ( 20 , 21 ). The behaviors of both models were able to replicate the behavioral performance that we observed in animal experiments ( Fig. 5, B and C ). The distributions of behavioral performances between early training days and late training days from the experimental data were very different from each other, such that the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence was large (0.39 ± 0.06). The KL divergences between the distributions of simulated behavioral performances and experimental data were significantly small to the large KL divergence value ( P = 0.005, n = 7 mice, Friedman test), and there was no difference ( P > 0.99) between Decision Ahead RL model and Continuous Deliberation RL model in either the early or late training session. ( Fig. 5D ). We could not determine which model is better on the basis of behavioral performance alone, given that both models reproduced the behavioral data well.

( A ) Two RL models: Decision Ahead and Continuous Deliberation. Q ( a n ), value for action a ( n ); P ( T an ), probability of action a ( n ); P wait ( n ) , the probability of waiting; Q wait ( n ) , waiting action value; P leave ( n ) , probability of leaving; Q leave ( n ) , leaving action value; R ( n ) , received reward. ( B and C ) The distributions of waiting durations from the early session and late session were simulated in the Decision Ahead model (B) and Continuous Deliberation model (C). ( D ) The Kullback-Leibler divergence between the distribution of early and late experimental data was significantly larger than the KL divergences between the distributions of simulated behavioral performances and experimental data ( P = 0.005), but there was no difference ( P > 0.99) between the two RL models. ( E ) Plots of z -scored Δ F / F values (DA w , blue), scaled Q wait (purple), and Q leave (green) from the Continuous Deliberation model. The Q wait and Q leave both predicted the experimental calcium activity well. ( F and G ) Computational RL model (continuous deliberation)–simulated data, dependent on manipulating Q wait in delayed gratification task. The simulation showed that manipulating Q wait (i.e., simulated dopamine activity) only influenced the waiting durations of Q wait manipulated trials [(F and G), P < 0.001]. ** P < 0.01; *** P < 0.001.

What does the ramping up of DAergic activity mean in the delayed gratification task? We tried to explain it with our RL models. In the Decision Ahead model, the agent keeps time until the predetermined moment has passed, which suggests that the ramping DAergic activity may relate to timing in the delayed gratification task. Some studies have proposed that the ramping activity is consistent with a role in the classical model of timing, with the movement being initiated when the ramping activity reaches a nearly fixed threshold value, following an adjusted slope of ramping activity ( 22 – 25 ). In contrast, our results showed that the DAergic activity ramped up to different values with similar trajectories on at a nearly constant slope ( Fig. 2, F to H ). This suggests that VTA DAergic neurons may not implement a decision variable for the Decision Ahead scenario. In the Continuous Deliberation RL model, we compared the curves of the value of waiting and leaving with the ramping up of DAergic activity and found that the behavioral performance of both animals and model agents reached the asymptote. The values of waiting ( r = 0.99, Pearson correlation; Fig. 5E , purple) and the leaving ( r = 0.91, Pearson correlation; Fig. 5E , green) each correlated positively with the ramp of DAergic activity during waiting ( z -scored Δ F / F , 0.5 s before exit from the last week of training; Fig. 5E , blue). This detailed analysis suggested that the Continuous Deliberation RL model agreed with previous studies ( 13 , 26 – 28 ) and that ramping DAergic activity signals the value of actions, either waiting or leaving, in the delayed gratification task.

In the Decision Ahead RL model, if the agent keeps timing during the waiting period through ramping DAergic activity to encode the elapse of time ( 29 – 31 ), then extra VTA DAergic activation should represent a longer time, thus leading to earlier cessation of waiting. This prediction is contrary to our optogenetics result that DAergic activation led to a longer waiting ( Fig. 4D ). Instead, we reproduced the optogenetic manipulations in the Continuous Deliberation RL model by either increasing or decreasing the value of waiting ( Q wait ) in a pseudorandom 20% of trials. The increase or decrease in waiting durations only occurred in the Q wait -manipulated trials ( P < 0.001, Friedman test, n = 10), whereas the remaining trials, including the next trials after value manipulation, did not differ significantly from controls ( P > 0.999, Friedman test, n = 10; Fig. 5, F to G ). Manipulating the value of leaving ( Q leave ) in a pseudorandom 20% of trials induced the opposite results, inconsistent with the experimental data (fig. S8, A and B). Manipulating the reward prediction error (RPE) signal in the model led to persistent changes to the waiting time on subsequent trials (fig. S8, C and D). This is inconsistent with the experimental finding that optogenetic manipulation of dopamine neuron firing only affects waiting time on the current trial ( Fig. 4, D and E ). Thus, the ramping dopamine signal is not consistent with an RPE signal in the delayed gratification task. Our experimental data and the Continuous Deliberation RL model together indicated that the ramping up of VTA DAergic activity profoundly influenced the waiting behavioral performance in the delayed gratification task, which suggested that this activity signals the value of waiting, rather than the value of leaving or RPE. Conceptually, our analysis revealed that delayed gratification involves real-time deliberation.

VTA DAergic activity during waiting predicts the behavioral performance in the delayed gratification task

Our optogenetic manipulation experiments and Continuous Deliberation RL model indicated that VTA DAergic activity during waiting influenced the waiting durations while the mouse performed the delayed gratification task ( Figs. 4 , D and E, and 5, F and G). Although the activity of VTA DAergic neurons ramped up consistently during waiting ( Fig. 2, G and H ), it still fluctuated to a certain extent moment by moment. Therefore, we sought next to determine whether this fluctuation of DAergic activities influences the waiting behavior in the delayed gratification task. A strong prediction made by the Continuous Deliberation model is that, if DAergic activity signals the value of waiting at each specific moment, then a momentary increase in the DA signal will make the agent more likely to keep waiting in the next “time bin” but not in subsequent time bins (fig. S8, E and F). That is to say, the value of waiting is only positively correlated with the behavior of the immediately following time bin, which indicates the Markovian nature of the model ( 32 ). We thus aimed to test the relationship between the amplitude of the momentary VTA DAergic signal and the behavior (i.e., waiting or leaving) within each time bin to determine how the momentary DAergic activity (the calcium signal amplitude in 0 to 1 s, 1 to 2 s, 2 to 3 s, or 3 to 4 s after waiting onset, shown as each cluster of bars in Fig. 6B ) affects the waiting performance in the subsequent periods (behavior from 1 to 2 s, 2 to 3 s, 3 to 4 s, and 4 to 5 s for DAergic activity from 0 to 1 s; behavior within 2 to 3 s, 3 to 4 s, and 4 to 5 s for DAergic from in 1 to 2 s; and so on; Fig. 6A ). To integrate data from multiple sessions and multiple animals, we took advantage of the linear mixed model (LMM) analysis (see Materials and Methods) ( 33 – 35 ). We examined the correlation between momentary DAergic activity and behavior (i.e., the momentary binary waiting decision). For the behavior, we coded sustained waiting as 1 and leaving in that time bin as 0 (trials that stopped before the examined time window were not taken into account) for different pairs of time bins. Ten independent LMM analyses were done for each activity-behavior pair, as indicated by the dash lines in Fig. 6A . The regression coefficients, as well as the confidence intervals of each of the 10 pairs, are shown by corresponding bars in Fig. 6B . The correlation is only significantly positive between adjacent DAergic and waiting bins ( P < 0.001, n = 7 mouse, black lines, regressed coefficient median; boxes, 50% confidence interval; whisker, 95% confidence interval; Fig. 6B , the first bar of each cluster, where the DA activity bin is 1 s ahead of the waiting bin). There was no significant correlation between DAergic activity at 3 to 4 s and behavior at 4 to 5 s ( r = 0.007, P = 0.61, n = 7), which may result from insufficient data for those long trials. Apart from these pairs with adjacent bins, other pairs of DAergic activity and waiting behavior did not show any significant correlation ( Fig. 6B , the remaining bars of each cluster). These results indicate that the waiting decision of the current moment is only influenced by the most recent DAergic signal but not by DAergic signal further in the past, which suggests that deliberation for waiting in delayed gratification may be a Markov process as we formalized in the Continuous Deliberation RL model ( 32 ).

( A ) Schematic of waiting probability ( P wait ) in waiting periods after momentary DAergic periods. ( B ) Relationship between momentary VTA DAergic activity (Ca 2+ signals) and its waiting probability. For each momentary DAergic period, its DAergic activity is only highly correlated ( P < 0.001) with P wait in the adjacent waiting period (the left bar of each cluster). ( C ) The distribution of z -scored mean Δ F / F of momentary DAergic periods. Three colors are used to illustrate: high dopamine activity (high DA, red), low dopamine activity (low DA, green), and other activity (gray). ( D ) The P wait of high DA and low DA activity trials for the adjacent period after the momentary DA periods. The difference between the P w of the high DA trials and low DA trials increases with the increase of threshold (Th). ( E and F ) Cumulative probabilities of waiting durations for the high-DA-ramping trials [(E) H-R, red], the lower-DA-ramping trials [(E) L-R, green] and their “next-in-series” trials (F). Bar graph showing that the normalized waiting durations of the H-R trials are significantly longer than those of the L-R trials [(E) P = 0.024] but did not differ significantly between their next-in-series trials [(F) P = 0.290]. * P < 0.05; *** P < 0.001.

In the Continuous Deliberation RL model, the probability of waiting ( P w ) positively correlates with the value of waiting ( Q wait ). To explore the impact of DAergic activity on the probability of waiting in our experimental data, we binned DAergic activity of every trial and normalized data points ( V DA ) in each momentary DAergic period [with each period lasting 1 s and starting from 0 to 9 s, as shown in Fig. 6C (top right)]. Then, we divided the trials into two groups by setting a series of arbitrary thresholds (red: high DAergic activity, V DA-Z ≥ Th; green: low DAergic activity, V DA-Z ≤ −Th, where Th was the threshold for the analysis of high/low DAergic activity) from these trials (Th was set to 0.9; Fig. 6C ). We analyzed the P w of low or high DAergic activity trials for the adjacent waiting period with different thresholds. In doing so, we found that the probability of waiting increased rapidly as the absolute value of the threshold increased. The P w of high DA and low DA activity trials fit well with a fifth-degree polynomial function ( R 2 = 0.93, −2.1 ≤ threshold ≤ 2.1). When the absolute values of the threshold are large enough (|Th| ≥ 1.7), the P w of the high DA activity trials is significantly ( P = 0.04, F 1,12 = 5.483, two-way ANOVA) higher than the P wait of the low DA-ramping activity trials in adjacent waiting periods (|threshold| = 2.0, P = 0.02; |threshold| = 2.1, P < 0.001, Sidak’s multiple comparisons test, n = 7; Fig. 6D ).

Last, we investigated the influence of fluctuations of intrinsic VTA DAergic activity on the waiting performance of mice in the delayed gratification task. There were certain trials in which DAergic activity across the whole duration of waiting was significantly higher (red, high-ramping) or lower (green, low-ramping) than the mean DAergic activity (see Materials and Methods). We then got two groups of trials and found that the cumulative distribution of waiting durations in high-ramping trials shifted to the right, with significantly higher normalized waiting durations (1.03 ± 0.01) compared to those low-ramping trials (0.98 ± 0.01, P = 0.024, n = 7, paired Student’s t test; Fig. 6E ), but there was no difference between the normalized waiting durations for the trials immediately following the high-ramping and low-ramping trials (next trial of high-ramping, 1.01 ± 0.01; next trial of low-ramping, 0.99 ± 0.01; P = 0.290, n = 7, paired Student’s t test; Fig. 6F ). These results accorded with our optogenetic manipulation experiment ( Fig. 4, D and E ), which indicated that optogenetically manipulated VTA DAergic activity transiently influences the duration of waiting in the delayed gratification task.

Here, we reported a previously unreported behavioral task in which the mice were trained to learn a foraging task with a delayed gratification paradigm. Mice learned to wait for bigger rewards that they received after waiting for longer ( Fig. 1, F to H ). On a neural level, we found that the calcium signal of VTA DAergic neurons ramped up consistently when mice waited in place before taking action to fetch the expected reward ( Fig. 2, G and H ). Further data analysis showed that the ramping VTA DA activity indeed influenced the behavioral performance of waiting ( Fig. 6, B to E ), which was confirmed with bidirectional optogenetic manipulations of VTA DAergic activity ( Fig. 4, D and E ). Last, we developed an RL model that predicted our experimental observations well and consolidated the conclusion that the ramping up of VTA DAergic activity signaled the value of waiting in the delayed gratification task, which involved real-time deliberation ( Fig. 5, B to G ).

DA release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) was previously conjectured to sustain or motivate the goal-directed behavior and resistance to distractions ( 13 , 14 ). Here, we explicitly implemented continuous less-optimal options during the delayed gratification process, in which, to achieve better performance, mice needed to sustain waiting and prevent/control impulsivity ( 3 , 6 , 36 , 37 ). We found remarkable and sustained DAergic activation when mice managed to wait longer and further demonstrated a causal link between DAergic activation and the increase in transient waiting probability. Furthermore, we found DAergic activity ramps up in a consistent manner during waiting, mimicking the value of waiting along with a series of states in our Continuous Deliberation RL model, both of which presumably contributed to pursuing a more valuable future goal and resisting the distraction of the less-optimal immediate options in our task. The momentary DAergic activity was found to correlate positively with the momentary waiting probability, which also suggested that DAergic activity may be involved in the continuous deliberation process. Therefore, we not only demonstrated the behavioral significance of DAergic activity in delayed gratification but also depicted “a continuous deliberation” framework in which DAergic activity may participate to help achieve more flexible and sophisticated performance.

Numerous works have used Pavlovian conditioning in studying DAergic activity ( 10 , 12 , 38 – 40 ). Some studies paired the reward with a cue (or cues) such that the animals do not need to perform effortful work to obtain rewards. It is well known that this kind of DAergic activity signals the RPE via phasic firing. In the studies using operant conditioning or goal-directed behavior, the animals have to perform actions and need effortful work to obtain outcomes, and a ramping up of DAergic activity was reported to emerge while the animals were approaching the reward ( 13 , 14 , 41 , 42 ). This ramping activity was suggested to signal the value of work ( 13 ) or a distant reward ( 14 ), but key evidence is lacking because the change of sensory input flow markedly alters the DAergic activity over time. Under such mutual influence, it is impossible to identify the RPE or the value of work from external cues. The RPE model of ramping activity assumes that the value increases exponentially (or at least in a convex curve) as the reward is approached. Under this model, sensory feedback is suggested to result in the RPE signal ramping up ( 41 , 43 , 44 ), while a lack of sensory feedback is predicted to make a flat RPE signal. In contrast, the ramping up of DAergic activity is well isolated from the external sensory inputs when performing the delayed gratification task in our model. Mice continuously deliberate about the current state and future rewards without any external sensory inputs while waiting in place. Despite the lack of external sensory inputs, we still observed the calcium signal of VTA DAergic neurons ramping up in a consistent manner, functionally mimicking an inner variable of the evolving value of waiting. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis of dopamine signaling the value that is related to time and effort investment under certain circumstances ( 13 ) but cannot be immediately explained by an RPE response to external sensory inputs.

Midbrain DAergic neurons play an important role in RL ( 9 , 11 , 12 , 45 , 46 ), where activation of DAergic neurons usually produces a reinforcement effect on an associated action, stimulus, or place. However, in our delayed gratification task, optogenetic manipulation of DAergic activity substantially influenced the ongoing behavior during the current trial without a visible reinforcement effect on later trials. Notably, this optogenetic manipulation was not sufficient to induce a reinforcement effect in the random place performance test (RPPT). These results revealed the distinct and potent instantaneous effect of DAergic activity during delayed gratification. By simulating transient manipulations of variables in the RL model, we showed that manipulating dopamine activity was equivalent to manipulating the value of waiting in the model. In contrast, manipulating the value of leaving or the RPE signal itself caused markedly different effects on behavior. The observations and analysis in our experiments suggest that the value of waiting is represented in VTA DAergic neurons during a delayed gratification task. This significantly updates the understanding of the coding mechanisms and fundamental functions of the DAergic system in delayed gratification. Our results suggested that DAergic neuron stimulation during the RPPT test is not rewarding but does lead to a shift in wait time. This control experiment was performed to exclude the rewarding effect of our DAergic stimulation paradigm during the delayed gratification task. However, such a test may not be strictly comparable with stimulation during the delayed gratification task because of the differences in the behavioral contexts.

The previous finding suggested that reasonable behavior in the face of instant gratification requires suppression of reflexive reward desiring. Human brain imaging results demonstrated that hemodynamic responses to conditioned (rewarding) stimuli in both the NAc and the VTA were significantly attenuated during the desire-reason dilemma ( 47 ). Such discrepancies with our results may be the consequence of different behavioral strategies, in which they measured the reward-related activation during a desire-reason dilemma, and we measured the DA activity during the waiting time. In addition, the different temporal and spatial resolution of human brain imaging and fiber photometry and electrophysiology may lead to the discrepancies, and our ramping pattern of DAergic activity also indicated that there are inhibitory tones in the NAc and VTA during the beginning phase of wait.

The design of our delayed gratification task recapitulates the realistic situation where immediate less-valuable choices lie in the way of pursuing a later but possibly larger benefit. A deficit in the ability to resist immediate reward for the delayed but possibly larger reward is closely related to a variety of disorders such as obesity, gambling, and addiction ( 1 , 48 ). The ramping VTA DAergic activity accords with a model of NOW versus LATER decisions in which DAergic signals have a strong influence on the prefrontal cortex in favoring LATER rewards ( 2 ). We propose that the sustained phasic VTA DAergic activity during the delay period could serve as a neural basis for the power to resist a temptation close at hand and improve reward rate or goal pursuit in the long run.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Animal care and use strictly followed institutional guidelines and governmental regulations. All experimental procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the Chinese Institute for Brain Research (Beijing) and ShanghaiTech University. Adult (8 to 10 weeks) dopamine transporter (DAT)–internal ribosome entry site (IRES)–Cre knock-in mice (JAX, stock no. 006660) were trained and recorded. Mice were housed under a reversed 12-hour day/12-hour night cycle at 22° to 25°C with free access to ad libitum rodent food.

Stereotaxic viral injection and optical fiber implantation

After deep anesthesia with isoflurane in oxygen, mice were placed on the stereoscopic positioning instrument. Anesthesia remained constant at 1 to 1.5% isoflurane supplied per anesthesia nosepiece. The eyes were coated with Aureomycin eye cream. The scalp was cut open, and the fascia over the skull was removed with 3% hydrogen peroxide in saline. The bregma and lambda points were used to level the mouse head. A small window of 300 to 500 μm in diameter was drilled just above the VTA [Anterior–Posterior (AP), −3.10 mm; Medial–Lateral (ML), ±1.15 mm; and Dorsal-Ventral (DV), −4.20 mm] for viral injection and fiber implantation. A total of 300 nl of AAV2/9-hSyn-DIO-GCamp6m (10 12 ) solution was slowly injected at 30 nl/min unilaterally for fiber photometry recording. Either 300 nl of AAV2/9-EF1a-DIO-hChR2(H134R)-mCherry (10 12 ) or 300 nl of AAV2/9-EF1a-DIO-eNpHR3.0-mCherry (10 12 ) was injected bilaterally for optogenetic experiments. The injection glass pipette was tilted at an angle of 8° laterally to avoid the central sinus. After injection, the glass pipette was kept in place for 10 min and then slowly withdrawn. An optical fiber [200 μm outside diameter (O.D.), 0.37 numerical aperture (NA); Anilab] hold in a ceramic ferrule was slowly inserted into the brain tissue with the tip slightly above the viral injection sites. The fiber was sealed to the skull with dental cement. Mice were transferred to a warm blanket for recovery and then housed individually in a new home until all experiments were done.

Behavioral tasks

One week after surgery, mice started a water restriction schedule to maintain 85 to 90% of free-drinking bodyweight for 5 days. The experimenter petted the mice 5 min per day for 3 days in a row and then started task training. All behavioral tasks were conducted during the dark period of the light/dark cycle.

The foraging task shuttle box had two chambers (10 cm by 10 cm by 15 cm) connected by a narrow corridor (45 cm by 5 cm by 15 cm; Fig. 1A ). A water port (1.2-mm O.D. steel tube, 3 cm above the floor) was attached to the end of one chamber, defined as the reward zone, with the other as the waiting zone. The position of the mouse in the shuttle box was tracked online with a custom MATLAB (2016b, MathWorks) program through an overhead camera (XiangHaoDa, XHD-890B). The experimental procedure control and behavioral event acquisition were implemented with a custom MATLAB program and an integrated circuit board (Arduino UNO R3).

One-arm foraging task (pretraining)

A water-restricted mouse was put in the shuttle box for free exploration for up to 1 hour. When the animal traveled from the waiting zone through the corridor to the reward zone to lick the water port, 10 μl of water was delivered by a step motor in 100 ms as a reward. A capacitor sensor monitored the timing and duration of licking. The animals return to the waiting zone to initiate the next trial. Exiting from the waiting zone triggered an auditory cue (200 ms at 4-kHz sine wave with 90 dB) to signal this exit from the waiting zone. The time spent in the waiting zone was defined as the waiting duration. The training was conducted every day for a week. All mice learned to move quickly back and forth between the two chambers to maximize the reward rate within 1 week.

Delayed gratification task

From the second week, the volume of water reward was changed to a function proportional to the waiting time: a wait time of 0 to 2 s for 0 μl; 2 to 4 s triggered delivery of 2 μl; 4 to 6 s, 6 μl; 6 to 8 s, 18 μl; and >8 s, 30 μl, as shown in Fig. 1A . The training was conducted 5 days a week, from Monday to Friday.

P w calculation

We divided all trials into two groups, waiting trials and leaving trials, according to whether the animal remained to wait or left during a given time interval, such as 1 s after each behavioral period. Then, we calculated the P w in this given time interval by the number of “waiting trials” [ N w( n ) ] and the number of “leaving trials” [ N L( n ) ] in the time window n

Then, we could calculate the P w for a given time duration

Linear mixed model

We implemented the LMM analysis using the open-source Python package “statsmodels” ( www.statsmodels.org/stable/mixed_linear.html ). The binary value of waiting or leaving during a specific behavioral period t beh was set as the dependent factor [ t beh = [1, 2), [2, 3), [3, 4), or [4, 5); unit, seconds]. The fluctuation of momentary DA signal from its mean during a preceding period t DA was set as fixed effects [ t DA = [0, 1), [1, 2), [2, 3), [3, 4); unit, seconds; note that t DA is always smaller than t beh ]. The animal identity and session numbers were set as a random effect ( n = 5 for each animal from the third week). The parameters of the model were estimated by restricted maximum likelihood estimation.

Optogenetic stimulation

Lasers, with wavelength of 473 nm for activation and 589 nm for inhibition, were coupled to the common end of a patchcord (200-μm O.D., 1 m long, and 0.37 NA). The patchcord split through an integrated rotatory joint into two ends connected to optical fibers implanted as described above (200-μm O.D. and 0.37 NA) for bilateral light delivery. First, the mice were trained for 3 weeks to learn the delayed gratification task. Optical stimulation was delivered pseudorandomly in ~20% of behavioral trials in the test experiment. Square pulses of 20 ms at 10 Hz for activation or a continuous stimulation for inhibition were delivered. The laser was set to ON when the animal entered the reward zone and to OFF upon exiting from the reward zone. The maximal laser stimulation was no longer than 16 s, even if, in the case, a mouse stayed in the waiting zone longer than this time. Continuous laser power at the tip of the splitting patchcord was about 10 mW for the 473-nm laser and 8 mW for the 589-nm laser, respectively.

Random place performance test

After finishing optogenetic tests for delayed gratification, all mice took an RPPT. The RPPT was carried on in a rectangular apparatus consisting of two chambers (30 cm by 30 cm by 30 cm) separated by an acrylic board. With an 8-cm-wide door open, the mice could move freely between the two chambers. Before testing, each mouse was placed into the apparatus for 5-min free exploration. The RPPT consisted of two rounds of 10-min tests. First, we randomly assigned one chamber as a test chamber. Laser pulses were delivered with 20% possibility (in accord with the setting of laser pulses delivering in delayed gratification task) while the mouse entered the test chamber. The delivery of light, no longer than 16 s, stopped while the mouse exited the test chamber. Next, we switched the chamber in which laser pulses were delivered. The laser output power and pulse length were set the same as in the optogenetic manipulations in the delayed gratification task. In this task, we analyzed the time in each chamber with or without laser delivered.

Fiber photometry recording

During the behavioral task training and test, we recorded the fluorescence signal of VTA DAergic neurons. The signal was acquired with a fiber photometry system equipped with a 488-nm excitation laser and a 505- to 544-nm emission filter. The GCaMP6m signal was focused on a photomultiplier tube (Hamamatsu, R3896 and C7319) and then digitalized at 1 kHz and recorded with a 1401 digitizer and Spike2 software (Cambridge Electronic Design, Cambridge, UK). An optical fiber (200-μm O.D., 0.37 NA, and 1.5 m long; Thorlabs) was used to transfer the excitation and emission light between recording and brain tissue. The laser power output at the fiber tip was adjusted to 5 to 10 μW to minimize bleaching.

All data were analyzed with custom programs written in MATLAB (MathWorks). First, we sorted the continuously recorded data by behavioral trials. For each trial, the data spanned the range between 1 s before the waiting onset and 2 s after the reward. Before hooking up the fiber to the mouse, we recorded 20 s of data and averaged as F b as the ground baseline. For each trial, we averaged 1 s of data before the waiting onset as the baseline F 0 and then calculated its calcium transient as

In the correlation analysis between VTA DAergic activity before waiting and the waiting duration of mice, we used averaged 1-s data before the waiting onset as the DAergic activity before waiting. In the analysis of high-ramping and low-ramping DAergic activity, we compared the whole calcium signal of every trial with the average curve (the same length as the analyzed calcium signal) of all trials from one mouse in a single training day with paired a t test and then separated their waiting times into high-ramping group and low-ramping group.

To facilitate presenting the data, we divided each trial data into four segments, including 1 s before waiting onset, waiting, running, and 2 s after rewarding. For comparing the rising trends, we resampled the data segments at 100, 100, 50, and 100 data points, respectively. In the delayed gratification task, the trial data were aligned to the waiting onset and presented as the mean plots with a shadow area indicating SEM of fluctuations.

In vivo electrophysiological recording

A custom-made head plate was placed on the skull of each mouse and affixed in place with dental cement. We removed the skull and dural carefully above the recording window before the implantation. Stereotrodes were twined from 12.7-μm Ni-Cr-Fe wires (Stablohm 675, California Fine Wire, CA, USA). Then, eight stereotrodes were glued together and gold plated to reduce impedance to 250 to 500 kilohms. The stereotrodes were gradually lowered to a depth of 0.7 mm above the VTA. A silver wire (127 μm diameter; A-M System) was attached to one of the four skull-penetrating M1 screws to serve as ground ( 19 ). Mice were allowed a recovery time of 7 days. Extracellular spiking signals were detected with eight stereotrodes and amplified (1000×) through a custom-made 16-channel amplifier with built-in band-pass filters (0.5 to 6 kHz). We selected one channel that did not show spike signals and defined it as a reference ground to reduce movement artifacts. Analog signals were digitized at 25 kHz and sampled by a Power1401 digitizer and Spike2 software (Cambridge Electronic Design). Spikes recorded by the stereotrode were sorted offline using Spike2 software (Cambridge Electronic Design). Classified single units should have a high signal-to-noise ratio (>3:1), reasonable refractory period (interspike interval, >1 ms), and relatively clear boundaries among different principal components analysis clusters. The spike frequency and waveform were used to determine cell type as the DA or γ-aminobutyric acid neurons. The putative DA neurons were identified by their relatively low firing rate (the mean firing rate, <15 Hz) and a broad initial positive phase of >1 ms. Then, the spike trains were aligned with the waiting onset in delayed gratification task. PSTHs (bin width, 100 ms) for each trial were calculated and presented with averages in plots.

Calcium signal simulation

We performed a simple simulation of the “calcium fluorescence signal” contributed by each recorded unit using kernel convolution with 0.1-s time bin ( 49 ). The kernel that we used is composed of a linear rising edge and exponential decay. We set the kernel parameters, namely, the rise time and half-peak decay time, to 0.2 and 0.7 s, respectively, from the relationship between fluorescence signal and a single action potential, without concerning the nonlinear effect of multiple action potentials ( 50 ).

We investigated two potential scenarios. One was that the mouse decided on a waiting duration before entering the waiting area and then waited according to the decided goal. The other scenario was that the mouse entered the waiting zone and determined whether to wait or leave as an ongoing process throughout the whole waiting period. We called these two scenarios “Decision Ahead” and “Continuous Deliberation,” respectively, and formulated corresponding RL-based models for simulation using Python (Python Software Foundation, version 2.7, available at www.python.org/ ).

Decision ahead

Inspired by animal behavior, we simply set three optional “actions” with different expected waiting durations that could empirically cover the main range of animals’ waiting durations seen during training ( T a1 = 1.65 s for action 1, T a2 = 2.72 s for action 2, and T a3 = 4.48 s for action 3). These waiting durations were equally spaced on the log-time axis, consistent with Weber’s law [that is, ln( T a1 ) = 0.5, ln( T a2 ) = 1, and ln( T a3 ) = 1.5]. During the execution of action a i , we imposed additional noise on the timing so that the actual waiting time τ ai for action a i followed a Gaussian distribution on the log-time axis centered at the T ai , ln ~N(ln( Τ ai ), 0.4 2 ), i = 1,2,3. These settings allowed us to best capture the animals’ waiting performance in the model. For each trial, the agent chose an action randomly based on the three action values and a Boltzmann distribution (SoftMax)

where P a i was the probability of choosing action a i and waiting for τ ai . Q a i was the value for a i . β was the inverse temperature constant tuned to 5 to best fit the animal experimental data. After waiting, the agent would get a reward according to the same reward schedule used in our experiment. Each action value was updated separately during the reward delivery

where the RPE δ was calculated by the difference between the hyperbolically discounted reward r (or “reward rate,” given by the absolute reward R dividing total time τ + 1 for obtaining the reward, where τ was the waiting duration and the additional 1 s was the estimated delay of running between the two zones) and the chosen action value Q a . The RPE was then used to update the value of the chosen action. We tuned the learning rate α to 0.002 to fit the animal behavioral data.

Continuous deliberation

In each trial, the agent would go through a series of hidden states, each lasting for 0 to 2 s randomly according to a Gaussian distribution (mean at 1 s). At each hidden state, the agent had two action options, either to keep waiting or to leave. If it chose to keep waiting, then the agent would transition to the next hidden state, with the past time of the previous state cumulated to the whole waiting duration. If the choice was to leave, then the cumulation would cease and a virtual reward dependent on the duration was delivered; a new trial would then begin from the initial state. The reward schedule was identical to that used for the animals during the experiments.

The action choice for the future was determined randomly by a Boltzmann distribution (SoftMax) and action values

P a w ( T + 1 ) was the probability of choosing to wait for the next state T + 1. Q a w ( T + 1 ) and Q a L ( T + 1 ) were the value of waiting and leaving, respectively, for state T + 1. β was the inverse temperature constant tuned to 5 to best fit the animal experimental data. The action values for each hidden state T were updated by a temporal difference learning algorithm (SARSA)

where the future action a ′was determined by the Boltzmann distribution in the previous step. The current action a and the future action a ′ could both be either waiting or leaving. The prediction error δ was calculated by the sum of reward rate r ( r remained zero until the reward R was delivered; τ + 1 was the total time for obtaining the reward, where τ was the waiting duration and the additional 1 s was the estimated delay of running between the two zones) and the future action value γ * Q a ′ ( T + 1 ) discounted by γ (γ = 0.9), minus the current action value Q a ( T ) . When a was leaving, the future action value Q a ′ ( T + 1 ) would always be zero. This error signal δ was used to update Q a ( T ) with the learning rate α = 0.001.

As a Markovian process, each state would be identical to the agent no matter how the state was reached or what the following actions might be. Thus, we extracted the learned value of waiting as a time series along all the hidden states to compare with the averaged curve of VTA DAergic activity. For each trial, we also extracted the time series of the transient waiting value for a trial-wise analysis. Apart from the value of waiting, we could also extract the time series of RPE for each trial. We simulated optogenetic manipulation in the model after normal training was accomplished as in the animal experiments.

Value manipulation

In 20% of trials in the simulation session, the future waiting value throughout the whole waiting period was manipulated. The optogenetics activation was simulated as an extra positive value added onto the future waiting value, and the optogenetics inhibition corresponded to a proportional decrease of the future waiting value as follows

and δ = r + γ * Q ~ a w ( T + 1 ) – Q a ( T ) , if   a ′ = a w .

Here, we set ∆ value−ext = 0.15 and κ value−inh = 0.9 so that the change in averaged waiting duration in the simulated “light-on” trials could capture the magnitude of the instantaneous effect of optogenetic stimulations on the current trials. Using these parameters “calibrated” by the current trial effect, we were able to compare the stimulation effect on the light-off or the following trials in both real and simulated situations. In addition, note that if the future action was chosen as waiting, then the manipulated value of waiting would be used in the RPE calculation and, thus, current action value updating as well.

RPE manipulation

Under this situation, in 20% of trials in the stimulation session, instead of the future waiting value, RPE (δ) was manipulated throughout the whole waiting period as follows

and Q a ( T ) ← Q a ( T ) + α * δ ~ . We set ∆ RPE−ext = 15 and ∆ RPE−inh = 20, which was calibrated by the current trial effect of real light stimulation.

To simulate the fluctuation in real DAergic signal, we simply multiplied the future waiting value during each state by a factor of σ ~ N(1, 0.3 2 ) (determined by the averaged signal-dependent noise magnitude/relative SD for all momentary DAergic amplitudes), as an addition to the original model [this is only implemented for fig. S8 (E and F)].

Electrophysiological recordings

Adult (8 to 10 weeks) DAT-IRES-Cre knock-in male mice 4 weeks after injection with AAV2/9-EF1a-DIO-ChR2(H134R)-mCherry or AAV-DIO-eNpHR3.0-mCherry were anesthetized with an intraperitoneal injection of pentobarbital (100 mg kg −1 ) and then perfused transcardially with ice-cold oxygenated (95% O 2 / 5% CO 2 ) N -methyl- d -glucamine (NMDG) artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) solution [93 mM NMDG, 93 mM HCl, 2.5 mM KCl, 1.25 mM NaH 2 PO 4 , 10 mM MgSO 4 ·7H 2 O, 30 mM NaHCO 3 , 25 mM glucose, 20 mM Hepes, 5 mM sodium ascorbate, 3 mM sodium pyruvate, and 2 mM thiourea (pH 7.4), 295 to 305 mosM]. After perfusion, the brain was rapidly dissected out and immediately transferred into an ice-cold oxygenated NMDG ACSF solution. Then, the brain tissue was sectioned into slices horizontally at 280 μm in the same buffer with a vibratome (VT-1200 S, Leica). The brain slices containing the VTA were incubated in oxygenated NMDG ACSF at 32°C for 10 to 15 min and then transferred to a normal oxygenated solution of ACSF (126 mM NaCl, 2.5 mM KCl, 1.25 mM NaH 2 PO 4 , 2 mM MgSO 4 ·7H 2 O, 10 mM glucose, 26 mM NaHCO 3 , and 2 mM CaCl 2 ) at room temperature for 1 hour. A slice was then transferred to the recording chamber and then submerged and superfused with ACSF at a rate of 3 ml/min at 28°C. Cells were visualized using infrared differential interference contrast and fluorescence microscopy (BX51, Olympus). VTA DAergic neurons were identified by their fluorescence and other electrophysiological characteristics. Whole-cell current-clamp recordings of VTA DAergic neurons were made using a MultiClamp 700B amplifier and Digidata 1440A interface (Molecular Devices). Patch electrodes (3 to 5 megohms) were backfilled with internal solution containing the following: 130 mM K-gluconate, 8 mM NaCl, 10 mM Hepes, 1 mM EGTA, 2 mM Mg·adenosine triphosphate, and 0.2 mM Na 3 ·guanosine triphosphate (pH 7.2, 280 mosM). Series resistance was monitored throughout the experiments. For optogenetic activation, blue light was delivered onto the slice through a 200-μm optical fiber attached to a 470-nm light-emitting diode (LED) light source (Thorlabs, USA). The functional potency of the ChR2-expressing virus was validated by measuring the number of action potentials elicited in VTA DAergic neurons using blue light stimulation (20 ms, 10 Hz, 2.7 mW) in VTA slices. For optogenetic inhibition, yellow light (0.7 mW) was generated by a 590-nm LED light source (Thorlabs, USA) and delivered to VTA DAergic neurons expressing eNpHR3.0 through a 200-μm optical fiber. To assure eNpHR-induced neuronal inhibition, whole-cell recordings were carried out in current-clamp mode and spikes were induced by current injection (200 pA) with the presence of yellow light. Data were filtered at 2 kHz, digitized at 10 kHz, and acquired using pClamp10 software (Molecular Devices).

Immunostaining

Mice were deeply anesthetized with pentobarbital (100 mg/kg, intraperitoneally), followed by saline perfusion through the heart. After blood was drained out, 4% paraformaldehyde (PFA) was used for fixation. Upon decapitation, the head was soaked in 4% PFA at room temperature overnight. The brain was harvested the next day, postfixed overnight in 4% PFA at 4°C, and transferred to 30% sucrose in 0.1 M phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) (pH 7.4) for 24 to 48 hours. Coronal sections (20 μm) containing the VTA were cut on a cryostat (Leica CM3050 S). The slides were washed with 0.1 M PBS (pH 7.4), incubated in blocking buffer [0.3% Triton X-100 and 5% bovine serum albumin in 0.1 M PBS (pH 7.4)] for an hour, and then transferred into the primary antibody (rabbit anti-tyrosine hydroxylase antibody, 1:1000; Invitrogen) in blocking buffer overnight at 4°C. The sections were washed three times in 0.1 M PBS and then incubated with donkey anti-rabbit immunoglobulin G H&L secondary antibody (conjugated to Alexa Fluor-488 or Alexa Fluor-594, 1:1000; Jackson ImmunoResearch) at room temperature for 2 hours. The nucleus was stained with 4′,6-diamidine-2-phenylindole. Sections were mounted in glycerin and covered with coverslips sealed in place. Fluorescent images were collected using a Zeiss confocal microscope (LSM 880).

Quantification and statistics

All statistics were performed by MATLAB (R2016b, MathWorks) and Python (v2.7, Python Software Foundation) routines. Data were judged to be statistically significant when the P values were less than 0.05. Asterisks denote statistical significance: * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, and *** P < 0.001. Unless stated otherwise, values were presented as means ± SEM.

Acknowledgments

We thank M. Luo, W. Ge, Y. Rao, W. Zhou, and B. Min for comments on the manuscript. We thank L. Lu for help with in vivo electrophysiology recording. We thank the Molecular Imaging Core Facility (MICF) at the School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University for providing technical support. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 31922029, 31671086, 61890951, and 61890950 to J.H.) and a Shanghai Pujiang Talent Award (grant no. 2018X0302-101-01 to W.S.).

Author contributions: W.S. and J.H. oversaw the whole project. W.S., J.H., and Z.G. designed the experiments. Z.G., C.L., and T.L. performed all animal experiments. Z.G. and H.W. analyzed the data. H.W. and S.F.-W. performed the computational modeling under the supervision of X.-J.W. M.C. performed the electrophysiological recordings. W.S., J.H., Z.G., and H.W. wrote the paper with the participation of all other authors.

Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials.

Supplementary Materials

This pdf file includes:.

Figs. S1 to S8

Other Supplementary Material for this manuscript includes the following:

Movies S1 and S2

View/request a protocol for this paper from Bio-protocol .

REFERENCES AND NOTES

Instant Gratification Essay

Cell phones, fast food, Google, “to-go”, downloading, drive through pharmacies and restaurants and banks coffee shops and even dry-cleaning, you can get your money extremely quickly so you can spend it faster. We are a nation that when we want something, we do not just want it now, we expect it now. The virtue of patience has been altered a bit in definition, twenty— even ten years ago a weak expression of patience may mean sitting at a restaurant for 30 minutes while they prepare the meal while your stomach gurgles and growls, now I even find myself getting irritated at the Starbucks worker when I have to wait five minutes for my latte to satisfy my ever persistent caffeine addiction. In this paper, I plan on examining the trend of society to expecting instant gratification over a hopefully broad scale. Our generation has been trained not only to desire instant gratification, but to provide it. I do not intend to “rant” about the evils of technology and about how it has supposedly made us needy and intolerant. I simply desire to examine through comparison how “now” has become a culturally accepted time requirement and as well as being taught to desire it, we must provide it.

3 Responses to Instant Gratification Essay

Great topic choice. This relates closely to a discussion I had recently with a friend of mine. This friend and I both frequent the gyms here at Penn State so we talked about working out and exchanged tips. A piece of advice he had for me was to use pills that are supposed to increase your metabolism and ultimately lead to better results. I do not use any products like these that satisfy the notion of instant gratification you outlined above, and opt instead to work hard and achieve my goals in a more natural and healthy way. There are sure to be many, many examples of this notion present in our culture today and will undoubtedly make for a good essay.

Such a good topic! I find myself swearing at my computer if the links do not load in more than ten seconds. It really is ridiculous. Also the difference in email versus regular mail is so interesting. We all probably check emails ten times a day and people in past generations waited days or even weeks for snail mail. This is a fantastic choice.

Hannah this is a great essay topic! It’s so true. Coming from North Jersey where pretty much everything important in open 24 hours, I find myself confused here in State College where the only things open at 2AM are cheap food places. I don’t even need anything that late at night, but I don’t like the feeling of knowing that should I need something, I would have to wait until morning. (Yes I realize how crazy this is, but it’s true.) Our generation expects everything immediately because we’re used to it. And that definitely wasn’t the case 20 years ago.

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Impacts of Instant Gratification and Consumerism Essay Example

Glancing around their house, an individual views the following: a large television, a model kitchen, impeccable tile and carpet, and beautiful bedrooms and bathrooms; still, this person continually wishes for more than they presently possess. Today, many individuals believe that material objects that were once considered to be luxuries, such as televisions and cell phones, are necessities (Mayell). This has caused the market for consumerism to increase greatly. Likewise, with increased access to technology and immediate access to information through the internet, individuals can obtain unlimited information whenever they desire it.

This constant stream of digital information can cause humans to gradually become less and less patient when facing events in everyday life. This is because instant gratification builds an individual’s need for immediate satisfaction, and causes them to become angry or frustrated when they are not instantly appeased (Conti). A parallel can be made between this concept and one present in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. As Huxley warned in his novel, consumerism and instant gratification are indeed principal socioeconomic issues present in today's society; enabling issues including negative impacts on an individual’s mental health, a negative impact on the environment, and a detrimental impact on an individual’s overall happiness.

Instant Gratification

Instant gratification can be extremely detrimental to an individual, as it can cause them to forget the satisfaction that comes from having patience. For instance, the fact that instant gratification decreases a person’s potential for patience is salient: "With the world at our fingertips, it’s hard to learn patience when everything is an instantaneous fix. If we become ill, suddenly search engines are filled with a possible diagnosis" (The Duke Perspective). With the ability to almost instantaneously obtain knowledge from multiple sources on basically any topic, humans are often driven to access information online rather than socialize. This fact has an extreme impact on human interaction, as individuals’ need for relationships with other humans declines. People can receive and even instantaneously consume products that are marketed online.

They can also be instantly gratified through online entertainment, and through social media portals. The forewarning of what is to come when dealing with instant gratification is present in Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World. In this novel, one of the main characters, Bernard, attempts to stand up to the societal norm of succumbing to the temptation of instant gratification: Lenina was still sobbing. “‘Too awful,’ she kept repeating, and all Bernard’s consolations were in vain. ‘Too awful! That blood!’ She shuddered. ‘Oh, I wish I had my soma’” (Huxley 78). Lenina does not understand that immediately giving in to the government’s suggestions can have negative consequences; but Bernard does, and he is trying to resist this calling. Bernard wants to stand against the standards set in his society, even when doing so causes him to appear to be an outlier in society.

Whenever they feel a strong emotion, citizens in Brave New World have been conditioned to take soma, a calming drug, and allow all of their emotions to fade into contentment. This is a poignant example of instant gratification, and proves that although desire for instant gratification is strong, it sometimes comes at the price of being able to experience deeper emotions. Interestingly, various studies have been done that have proven that people are more likely to make better long-term decisions rather than short-term ones when they are tempted by instant gratification: "If you offer them a choice between $10 today and $11 tomorrow, they usually choose the smaller amount. If the choice is between $10 a year from now and $11 a year and a day from now, most people choose $11” (Harvard Health Publishing).

This statistic illustrates that people are better at making long-term beneficial decisions rather than decisions in which they are tempted into wanting instant gratification. This is likely due to the fact that they see smaller instantaneous rewards as more beneficial than a slightly larger reward which they must wait for. This is detrimental as it may cause a person to be unable to wait; therefore, causing them to never be able to reach their fullest potential. Overall, there are many examples of instant gratification that can be found in today’s society; however, these many have negative consequences and should be avoided to the best of a person’s ability.

Impacts of InNegative stant Gratification

Instant gratification can have extremely negative impacts on an individual’s overall health and well-being. For instance, when people are overwhelmed or unhappy, they often turn to material outlets as a way of relieving their stress and obtain instant gratification or what they perceive as relief. These outlets may include drugs, alcohol, or other unsafe behaviors. Like in Brave New World, many people in today’s world become easily upset if things do not go their way. Instead of having the patience and the mental stability to realize that obstacles are merely part of life, people turn to other sources for instant gratification (The Duke Perspective).

As the want for instant gratification grows, people who are not immediately rewarded for their actions and who do not receive what they feel they deserve, become upset. This may cause them to turn towards harmful coping mechanisms that generally have only temporary benefits. These mechanisms can turn into addictions and can have a very negative impact on an individual's life. Consequently, in Brave New World, when Bernard decided to give into his temptations and sleep with Lenina, he states, “‘Oh, [spending time with you (Lenina) was] the greatest fun,’ he answered, but in a voice so mournful, with an expression so profoundly miserable, that Lenina felt all her triumph suddenly evaporate. Perhaps he had found her too plump, after all” (Huxley 64). Although Bernard enjoyed giving in to his deepest desires, he was still able to see the negative impacts that this had on his life and warned the reader of these detriments. His views allowed him to see the benefits of withstanding the temptations that instant gratification provides while holding out for something more valuable.

Additionally, instant gratification is known to cause addictive and impatient behavior. In one study done on this topic, scientist Walter Mischel set up an experiment known as the "Marshmallow Test," which was conducted with children. Researchers told the children that they could either receive a cookie and marshmallow at that moment, or they could wait for the researcher to return after a certain amount of time, and they would then receive two marshmallows or cookies. It was proven that children who chose wait earned higher SAT scores later in life, that they were less likely to have behavioral problems, and that they were more likely to succeed in school. Likewise, researchers learned that the children who successfully waited were likely considering the "cool" (intellectual) aspects of the situation while children who were not able to wait were likely considering the "hot" (emotional) aspects of the situation (Conti).

Even as children, humans begin to develop their attitudes towards instant gratification; these continue to impact them for the entire duration of their lives. If a child is unable to see value in waiting to accomplish large goals, then they may struggle later in life. This is an extremely negative impact of instant gratification, because a lack of patience can lead to various adult struggles such as anxiety and depression. So, it is very important that individuals, especially children, understand that, although instant gratification is tempting, it is better to hold out for something that in the long run will be more beneficial.

Consumerism

Increased consumerism can have an extreme impact on the environment and contributes to the depletion of natural resources. For example, in her article "As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers, Study Says," Hillary Mayell references a quote by Gary Gardner, a director of research for Worldwatch. He states: "The report [on the impacts of consumerism on the environment] addresses the devastating toll on the Earth's water supplies, natural resources, and ecosystems exacted by a plethora of disposable cameras, plastic garbage bags, and other cheaply made goods with built in product-obsolescence, and cheaply made manufactured goods that lead to a "throw away" mentality" (Mayell).

The “throw-away mentality” allows people to believe that it is okay to pollute the environment, as long as they can obtain what they desire. This mentality is seemingly selfish and contributes greatly to pollution around the world. In the long term, this can cause people to be unable to see the value in preserving resources for future generations. This same theme is present in Brave New World. For instance, when John speaks of his life on the reservation, he states, “When he tore his clothes, Linda did not know how to mend them. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away clothes with holes in them and got new ones” (Huxley 87). In Brave New World, the theme of consumerism is very strong as the government requires consumerism to thrive.

Due to this, they require their citizens to continually consume and produce waste, not caring that they are causing irreparable damage to the environment. On the savage reservation, natives value the environment, so they scorn John for continually needing new clothes. One real-world example of these impacts can be seen when considering consumerism in China. It was stated that, “China provides a snapshot of changing realities. For years, the streets of China's major cities were characterized by a virtual sea of people on bicycles, and 25 years ago there were barely any private cars in China. By 2000, 5 million cars moved people and goods; the number is expected to reach 24 million by the end of next year" (Mayell).

Over the past 25 years, consumerism has greatly increased due to the rise of advanced technology. In this instance, the increased number of cars in China has greatly impacted their environment. Currently, China is very polluted; as consumerism increases, it will likely continue to become more polluted. With an increased demand for cars, there is also an increased demand for the natural resources necessary to produce a functional and safe car. Eventually, these resources may become scarce due to increased consumerism. In summary, although it is very tempting for individuals to purchase new products whenever they desire them, this increase in consumption is not worth the negative impacts that it has on the environment.

Opposing views claim that consumerism and instant gratification allow people to be happier because they can access information and purchase products without having to wait and become frustrated. One cannot deny the fact that it may seem as if instant gratification and the ability to constantly consume more products would allow a person to be happier. However, research has proven that people who succumb to the temptations of consumerism and instant gratification are not necessarily happier, or more successful than those who do not; in fact, consumers often experience mental issues due to this gratification.

For instance, it has been found that "the increase in prosperity is not making humans happier or healthier, according to several studies” (Mayell). Additionally, “findings from a survey of life satisfaction in more than 65 countries indicate that income and happiness tend to track well until about $13,000 of annual income per person (in 1995 dollars). After that, additional income appears to produce only modest increments in self-reported happiness" (Mayell). Although it may seem as if instant gratification may make people happier, research shows that this is largely untrue.

This is likely because people who succumb to instant gratification are unable to feel true satisfaction for their actions since they may not have to work very hard to achieve their goals. This may also be because these people are never satisfied with what they have and instead are constantly wishing for more and more. The continual need for more and more can even have an extreme impact on an individual’s mental health. It has even been proven that humans who are bombarded with constant information may resort to escapism techniques which may be extremely detrimental to their health; even causing a person to develop mental disorders such as anxiety and depression (The Duke Perspective). Therefore, although it may seem that instant gratification would make individuals happier, it has been proven that this is not so, and that increased consumerism and instant gratification can instead lead to mental issues.

Overall, as Huxley warned in his novel, Brave New World, consumerism and instant gratification are principal socioeconomic issues present in today's society; enabling issues including a negative impact on an individual’s mental health, a negative impact on the environment, and an increase in risky behaviors. Instant gratification can cause both mental and physical determinants to an individual. Consumerism pollutes the environment and causes people to continually want more, even when they have everything that they need. Additionally, instant gratification does not cause individuals to become happier; instead, it may cause them to develop mental health issues. In closing, humans must attempt to be aware of the impact that their increased consumerism and need for instant gratification have; not only for themselves, but for others around them, and the Earth as a whole.

Works Cited

Conti, Regina. “Delay of Gratification.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/science/delay-of-gratification.

Harvard Health Publishing. “Deferring Gratification: The Battle in the Brain.” Harvard Health, www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Deferring_gratification_The_battle_in_the_brain.

Mayell, Hillary. “As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers, Study Says.” Earth Suffers as Consumerism Spreads, 26 July 2018, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2004/01/consumerism-earth-suffers/.

The Duke Perspective. “Instant Gratification Causes a Society Stricken with Addictive Personalities.” The Duke Perspective, 17 Sept. 2018, sites.duke.edu/perspective/2018/09/17/instant-gratification-causes-a-society-stricken-with-addictive-personalities/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Effects of Social Media — Social Media Addiction: Consequences and Strategies for Recovery

Social Media Addiction: Consequences and Strategies for Recovery

• Categories: Effects of Social Media Media Influence Social Media

About this sample

Words: 559 |

Published: Jul 15, 2020

Words: 559 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, suggested solution, social media anxiety disorder.

• David Blackwell, 21 April 2017 Extraversion, neuroticism, attachment style and fear of missing out as predictors of social media use and addiction. From https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.039 .
• Przybylski et al., 2013 A.K. Przybylski, K. Murayama, C.R. DeHaan, V. Gladwell Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out Computers in Human Behavior (2013), pp. 1841-1848, 10.1016/j.chb.2013.02.014.
• Weidman, A.C., Fernandez, K.C., Levinson, C.A., Augustine, A.A., Larsen, R.J., & Rodebaugh, T.L. (2012). Compensatory internet use among individuals higher in social anxiety and its implications for well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(3), 191-195. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.003
• Parade, S.H., Leerkes, E.M., & Blankson, A.N. (2010). Attachment to parents, social anxiety, and close relationships of female students over the transition to college. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39(2), 127-137. doi: 10.1007/s10964-009-9396-x.
• Cludius, B., Stevens, S., Bantin, T., Gerlach, A., & Hermann, C. (2013). The motive to drink due to social anxiety and its relation to hazardous alcohol use. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 27(3), 806-813. doi: 10.1037/a0032295.

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Jessica Grose

Get tech out of the classroom before it’s too late.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

Jaime Lewis noticed that her eighth-grade son’s grades were slipping several months ago. She suspected it was because he was watching YouTube during class on his school-issued laptop, and her suspicions were validated. “I heard this from two of his teachers and confirmed with my son: Yes, he watches YouTube during class, and no, he doesn’t think he can stop. In fact, he opted out of retaking a math test he’d failed, just so he could watch YouTube,” she said.

She decided to do something about it. Lewis told me that she got together with other parents who were concerned about the unfettered use of school-sanctioned technology in San Luis Coastal Unified School District, their district in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Because they knew that it wasn’t realistic to ask for the removal of the laptops entirely, they went for what they saw as an achievable win: blocking YouTube from students’ devices. A few weeks ago, they had a meeting with the district superintendent and several other administrators, including the tech director.

To bolster their case, Lewis and her allies put together a video compilation of clips that elementary and middle school children had gotten past the district’s content filters.

Their video opens on images of nooses being fitted around the necks of the terrified women in the TV adaptation of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It ends with the notoriously violent “Singin’ in the Rain” sequence from “A Clockwork Orange.” (Several versions of this scene are available on YouTube. The one she pointed me to included “rape scene” in the title.) Their video was part of a PowerPoint presentation filled with statements from other parents and school staff members, including one from a middle school assistant principal, who said, “I don’t know how often teachers are using YouTube in their curriculum.”

That acknowledgment gets to the heart of the problem with screens in schools. I heard from many parents who said that even when they asked district leaders how much time kids were spending on their screens, they couldn’t get straight answers; no one seemed to know, and no one seemed to be keeping track.

Eric Prater, the superintendent of the San Luis Coastal Unified School District, told me that he didn’t realize how much was getting through the schools’ content filters until Lewis and her fellow parents raised concerns. “Our tech department, as I found out from the meeting, spends quite a lot of time blocking certain websites,” he said. “It’s a quite time-consuming situation that I personally was not aware of.” He added that he’s grateful this was brought to his attention.

I don’t think educators are the bad guys here. Neither does Lewis. In general, educators want the best for students. The bad guys, as I see it, are tech companies.

One way or another, we’ve allowed Big Tech’s tentacles into absolutely every aspect of our children’s education, with very little oversight and no real proof that their devices or programs improve educational outcomes. Last year Collin Binkley at The Associated Press analyzed public records and found that “many of the largest school systems spent tens of millions of dollars in pandemic money on software and services from tech companies, including licenses for apps, games and tutoring websites.” However, he continued, schools “have little or no evidence the programs helped students.”

It’s not just waste, very likely, of taxpayer money that’s at issue. After reading many of the over 900 responses from parents and educators to my questionnaire about tech in schools and from the many conversations I had over the past few weeks with readers, I’m convinced that the downsides of tech in schools far outweigh the benefits.

Though tech’s incursion into America’s public schools — particularly our overreliance on devices — hyperaccelerated in 2020, it started well before the Covid-19 pandemic. Google, which provides the operating system for lower-cost Chromebooks and is owned by the same parent company as YouTube, is a big player in the school laptop space, though I also heard from many parents and teachers whose schools supply students with other types and brands of devices.

As my newsroom colleague Natasha Singer reported in 2017 (by which point “half the nation’s primary- and secondary-school students” were, according to Google, using its education apps), “Google makes $30 per device by selling management services for the millions of Chromebooks that ship to schools. But by habituating students to its offerings at a young age, Google obtains something much more valuable”: potential lifetime customers.

The issue goes beyond access to age-inappropriate clips or general distraction during school hours. Several parents related stories of even kindergartners reading almost exclusively on iPads because their school districts had phased out hard-copy books and writing materials after shifting to digital-only curriculums. There’s evidence that this is harmful: A 2019 analysis of the literature concluded that “readers may be more efficient and aware of their performance when reading from paper compared to screens.”

“It seems to be a constant battle between fighting for the students’ active attention (because their brains are now hard-wired for the instant gratification of TikTok and YouTube videos) and making sure they aren’t going to sites outside of the dozens they should be,” Nicole Post, who teaches at a public elementary school in Missouri, wrote to me. “It took months for students to listen to me tell a story or engage in a read-aloud. I’m distressed at the level of technology we’ve socialized them to believe is normal. I would give anything for a math or social studies textbook.”

I’ve heard about kids disregarding teachers who tried to limit tech use, fine motor skills atrophying because students rarely used pencils and children whose learning was ultimately stymied by the tech that initially helped them — for example, students learning English as a second language becoming too reliant on translation apps rather than becoming fluent.

Some teachers said they have programs that block certain sites and games, but those programs can be cumbersome. Some said they have software, like GoGuardian, that allows them to see the screens of all the students in their classes at once. But classroom time is zero sum: Teachers are either teaching or acting like prison wardens; they can’t do both at the same time.

Resources are finite. Software costs money . Replacing defunct or outdated laptops costs money . When it comes to I.T., many schools are understaffed . More of the money being spent on tech and the maintenance and training around the use of that tech could be spent on other things, like actual books. And badly monitored and used tech has the most potential for harm.

I’ve considered the counterarguments: Kids who’d be distracted by tech would find something else to distract them; K-12 students need to gain familiarity with tech to instill some vague work force readiness.

But on the first point, I think other forms of distraction — like talking to friends, doodling and daydreaming — are better than playing video games or watching YouTube because they at least involve children engaging with other children or their own minds. And there’s research that suggests laptops are uniquely distracting . One 2013 study found that even being next to a student who is multitasking on a computer can hurt a student’s test scores.

On the second point, you can have designated classes to teach children how to keyboard, code or use software that don’t require them to have laptops in their hands throughout the school day. And considering that various tech companies are developing artificial intelligence that, we’re meant to understand, will upend work as we know it , whatever tech skills we’re currently teaching will probably be obsolete by the time students enter the work force anyway. By then, it’ll be too late to claw back the brain space of our nation’s children that we’ve already ceded. And for what? So today’s grade schoolers can be really, really good at making PowerPoint presentations like the ones they might one day make as white-collar adults?

That’s the part that I can’t shake: We’ve let tech companies and their products set the terms of the argument about what education should be, and too many people, myself included, didn’t initially realize it. Companies never had to prove that devices or software, broadly speaking, helped students learn before those devices had wormed their way into America’s public schools. And now the onus is on parents to marshal arguments about the detriments of tech in schools.

Holly Coleman, a parent of two who lives in Kansas and is a substitute teacher in her district, describes what students are losing:

They can type quickly but struggle to write legibly. They can find info about any topic on the internet but can’t discuss that topic using recall, creativity or critical thinking. They can make a beautiful PowerPoint or Keynote in 20 minutes but can’t write a three-page paper or hand-make a poster board. Their textbooks are all online, which is great for the seams on their backpack, but tangible pages under your fingers literally connect you to the material you’re reading and learning. These kids do not know how to move through their day without a device in their hand and under their fingertips. They never even get the chance to disconnect from their tech and reconnect with one another through eye contact and conversation.

Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” prescribes phone-free schools as a way to remedy some of the challenges facing America’s children. I agree that there’s no place for smartphones on a K-12 campus. But if you take away the phones and the kids still have near-constant internet connectivity on devices they have with them in every class, the problem won’t go away.

When Covid hit and screens became the only way for millions of kids to “attend” school, not having a personal device became an equity issue. But we’re getting to a point where the opposite may be true. According to the responses to my questionnaire, during the remote-school era, private schools seemed to rely far less on screens than public schools, and many educators said that they deliberately chose lower-tech school environments for their own children — much the same way that some tech workers intentionally send their kids to screen-free schools.

We need to reframe the entire conversation around tech in schools because it’s far from clear that we’re getting the results we want as a society and because parents are in a defensive crouch, afraid to appear anti-progress or unwilling to prepare the next generation for the future. “I feel like a baby boomer attacking like this,” said Lewis.

But the drawbacks of constant screen time in schools go beyond data privacy, job security and whether a specific app increases math performance by a standard deviation. As Lewis put it, using tech in the classroom makes students “so passive, and it requires so little agency and initiative.” She added, “I’m very concerned about the species’ ability to survive and the ability to think critically and the importance of critical thinking outside of getting a job.”

If we don’t hit pause now and try to roll back some of the excesses, we’ll be doing our children — and society — a profound disservice.

The good news is that sometimes when the stakes become clear, educators respond: In May, Dr. Prater said, “we’re going to remove access to YouTube from our district devices for students.” He added that teachers will still be able to get access to YouTube if they want to show instructional videos. The district is also rethinking its phone policy to cut down on personal device use in the classroom. “For me,” he said, “it’s all about how do you find the common-sense approach, going forward, and match that up with good old-fashioned hands-on learning?” He knows technology can cause “a great deal of harm if we’re not careful.”

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.