Should it be

1. “The main finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment Mischel et al. (1972) was ……”, or
2. “The main finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., 1972) was ……”

Read your sentence aloud, but don’t read the part in brackets. Ask yourself, does this make sense? I think 1 doesn’t make sense but 2 does. Do you agree?

How about

1. “Mischel et al. (1972) found that….”, or
2. “(Mischel et al., 1972) found that ….”

When you read both options aloud, leaving out the part in brackets, I think 1 makes sense but 2 doesn’t. What do you think?

Finally, how about these

1. “Another finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., (1972) was ….”, or
2. “Another finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., (1972)) was ….”

Neither of those are correct. 1 is wrong because there are two left brackets but only one right bracket. 2 has equal numbers of left and right brackets, but has a nested bracket “(Mischel et al., (1972))”. It’s not algebra, so we don’t nest brackets. It should be

“Another finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., 1972) was ….”

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