Effortful and Effortless Control: Children’s Behavior While Delaying Gratification Reveals Distinct Roles of Sociocultural Norms and Habits

Traditionally, delay of gratification has been conceptualized as a function of effortful control. Recent perspectives, however, suggest that children also delay gratification through habits that are culturally acquired, which may involve effortless control. However, no studies have tested whether waiting in culturally practiced contexts requires less effort. To address this question, we analyzed videotaped delay of gratification sessions from Yanaoka et al., in which Japanese children waited longer to eat sweets while U.S. children waited longer to open gifts, consistent with cultural practices of waiting. We analyzed children’s behaviors using two coding schemes: a global impression scheme to capture holistic effort, and a specific behaviors scheme to track discrete indicators of effortful control and temptation. Consistent with the effortless control account, Japanese children displayed less effort and temptation with sweets than with gifts. Further, children’s effort and interest predicted their waiting times only in non-culturally practiced contexts, as predicted. However, contrary to the effortless control prediction that cultural practices of waiting to open gifts would reduce effort, U.S. children displayed more temptation and effort with gifts than with sweets, like Japanese children. To explain these results, we propose two distinct mechanisms that support delaying gratification: social norms motivate children to decide to wait despite the effort, while frequent repetition of waiting over an extended period (as occurs with waiting across thousands of meals, but is unlikely to occur with waiting to open gifts) creates habits that reduce the effort required to wait.