Today’s research summary is based on this paper which Angela Duckworth co-authored with Chris Peterson and colleagues, and where she first introduced her concept of grit and operationalized it by introducing the Grit Scale.
Monkey Grit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- One common thread running thorough Angela’s research is a (harmonious) obsession with finding out what leads to great achievement. A lot of earlier research in psychology has focused on the role of talent/ intelligence in high achievement, and that role is well established.
- Terman, for example, studied a group of highly gifted children in a famed longitudinal study which found that those who rose to prominence were more likely to exhibit “Perseverance, Self-Confidence, and Integration toward goals”, rather than mere high IQ. So, cognitive factors are just a part of the picture, and do not explain the whole picture.
- The other factors that could influence high performance have been variously named as non-cognitive, personality or motivational factors. Among these, the Big Five personality trait of Conscientiousness keeps emerging in research linking personality with high achievement and work outcomes. However, conscientiousness may be multi-faceted with the achievement oriented facets that make one work hard, try to do a good job, and completes the task at hand, be more closely related to job performance than the dependability oriented facets that make one self-controlled and conventional.
- Thus Angela thought it worthwhile to introduce a new concept called Grit. which could explain why some people who have equal or lesser talent succeed over others who might have greater talent/ intelligence. This is how they define Grit:
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We define grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina. Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory and cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course.
- Grit is different from Conscientiousness, but correlated with the achievement side of Conscientiousness. To me, conscientiousness seems to comprise both Grit and Self-control. Grit is all about staying course driven by long-term super-ordinate goals, while self-control is more about not getting distracted and managing one’s impulses and emotions in the service of the currently activated goal. On can think of grit as sustained self-control in the service of a constant non-changing goal. The important thing to note is Grit is different from both self-control and conscientiousness.
- Across six studies Angela found that Grit predicted successful outcomes over and above Intelligence. Point to note that Grit and IQ/ intelligence are typically uncorrelated or even negatively correlated. The latter finding is explained by the fact that people having less IQ/ Talent may need to exercise and develop Grit more fully to achieve good outcomes. Three of these studies were longitudinal and the rest cross-sectional.
- Study 1 & 2 validated a 12 item Grit scale, which contained two orthogonal factors passion ( or consistency of interest) and perseverance of effort. The incremental validity of grit in predicting educational achievements (an outcome variable), over and above, IQ and conscientiousness, in a cross-sectional population was also ascertained. It was also found that older people were more gritty.
- In study 3, they looked at undergrads at UPenn and found that grit predicted overall CGPA and explained variance over and above that explained by SAT scores(proxy for intelligence).
- Study 4 and 5 looked at west point cadets (the analog of NDA cadets in India) and found that Grit predicted who made it through the beast barracks (the first summer training) better than self-control etc. However, for those who stayed, self-control predicted better the CGPA at end of year one and MPS (Military performance score).
- Study 6 looked at National spelling bee participants and found that Grit predicted who will make to which final round. Also the effect of grit was mediated by the study time or hours participants put on weekend preparing for this and number or prior participation in the competition ( the more gritty you are the more likely you are to participate in more prior competitions and the more no. of prior participation, the greater your odds of success)
- Overall, this paper gave direction to a whole new field and established Grit as a valid concept with important outcomes and correlates.
If your interest has been piqued, you can check the full article here.