Tag Archives: grit

Dualistic model of Passion, Perseverance, Purpose and Persona

Some of you may be already familiar with the Dualistic Model of Passion as advocated by Robert Vallerand et al. To recap, passion is of two types: harmonious and obsessive. Both of them have different antecedents (autonomous vs controlled integration) and different consequents ( well-being vs Mal-adaptive).

I wont go deep into what an obsessive or harmonious passion is; suffice it to say that in harmonious passion you can be passionate about more than one activity, the activity is not all consuming; while in obsessive passion the activity has control over you than vice versa and you feel pressured to spend time in the activity at the cost to other important activities/ relationships.

Important to note is that both types of passions are indeed passions about activities as we value those activities, love to do them , they form a core of our identity and we spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy indulging in those activities: This is true for harmonious as well as obsessive passions.

Passions are nothing but motivations as they propel us to keep doing something.

Before we move ahead we will take a quick detour of Self Determination Theory (SDT). As per SDT there are 3 basic psychological needs all humans have: need for Autonomy, Mastery (competence) and Connectedness (relatedness) . To that, many, including myself, add a fourth need, the need to find Meaning.

SDT actually is many mini-theories: one of them concerns how people are intrinsically motivated to do some activities which they find pleasurable or fun to do. At other times people are motivated by extrinsic motivation like rewards, status etc and parents say motivate their child to do homework by using such extrinsic mechanisms when the activity by itself is not enjoyable or fun to do. Over time, the child may internalize such motivations and they become more and more autonomous in the sense they are driven by the child’s sense of identity (I am a student who likes to study) than say the child’s internalized guilt or pride (I have to study so that I can live upto my parents expectations) . The process of turning external motivation to more autonomous motivation is called internalization.

The process of internalization can be helped or hindered by satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Of these autonomy support by significant others is the most studied. When an autonomy supportive person is present , then the recipient (say the child) is more likely to internalize well and have more autonomous forms of motivation to indulge in the activity.

Now lets connect this back to dualistic model of passion (DMP). As per Vallernad, people may develop passion for an activity because they value it and start investing time and energy in it; however the type of passion they develop will depend on whether they choose it themselves and have autonomy supportive parents etc (in which case they develop harmonious passion) or whether they feel controlled and coerced in their choice due to overt or overt pressure by parents etc. (in which case they develop obsessive passion).

To sum up, we all need to get motivated to do things that are not fun and thus need to internalize and own up to various external motivations. Internalization of external motivation so that it approaches intrinsic motivation is thus an important part of growing up. Autonomy support aids this and leads to better and more harmonious outcomes, while controlling behaviors (by significant others) lead to maladaptive and discordant (obsessive) outcomes.

We can now extend the analogy to other domains. Consider the whole behavioral paradigm of reinforcement learning. When we encounter the world there are reward contingencies (which we should approach) and punishment contingencies (which we should avoid). While the rewards are goals that are desirable end states and hence finite; the punishments are anti-goals or undesirable end states and hence infinite. Learning is needed to make such anti-goals goals. Learning can be facilitated by either mastery experiences where tools like small wins, vicarious learning etc can be used to build self efficacy of the person; or it can be facilitated by failure experiences where you put a mouse in water to make it learn how to swim and thus by approaches like fail fast learning you make them learn. Now obviously both kinds of learning, whether building confidence using mastery experiences or building doggedness using repeated trial and error fail fast learning can result in Perseverance; the former would be harmonious perseverance while the latter obsessive perseverance. In the former you would pursue goals from a position of strength, while in latter you might be narrowly focused on one particular goal and not ready to give it up (think John Henryism). The fact that we all need to move towards and learn better form reward contingencies means we have a need for mastery/ competence.

Next let us consider relatedness/ connectedness need. Consider the fact that we can live in an other oriented environment or in a self-focused environment. We all have a desire to leave our imprint on the world or to put a ding in the universe, we can do that either by leaving a personal legacy or by having a generative impact. Self expansion where we include others in the self is a process whereby we move away from a focus on personal legacy towards generative impact. As you might have guessed other oriented / relatedness need driven environment leads to better self expansion leading to harmonious purpose; while self focused environment leads to obsessive purpose that is less fulfilling and inflexible. Our need for connectedness derives from our need to self expand.

Finally, consider need for meaning. We can either live our life such that it has a meaningful frame of reference or we can keep encountering the absurd. We all have a desire to make sense of our lives, and we can either use the narrative self to weave a story around our adventures or we can live in a stream of consciousness in-the-moment mindfulness sort of adventure. Living in the stream of consciousness mode is not feasible as it lacks coherence and we need to move that into the narrative self. Story editing, defense mechanisms of denial, dissociation etc may be operational here to move and remove materiel from the narrative self. And of course, having a meaningful frame of reference, be it religion or spirituality will aid in such story editing; while trying not to get deluded and living in the present, experiencing self will probably hinder that story editing mechanism. And the former will be associated with an integrated and harmonious persona/ personality/self; while the latter with a discordant/ obsessive one.

I know the extension of dualistic model of passion to perseverance, purpose and persona is all a conjecture as of now; but that is how science progresses. There are many a good testable hypothesis there. Hope someone actually goes ahead and tests these.

Perseverance : filmy style!

I am on a mission to create Bollywood as well as Hollywood playlists for all the 24 VIA strengths and also make a list of Hindi and English movies related to that strength theme. I recently started working on Gratitude and one my dear friends Vivek Mohile asked if I can share whatever I have compiled till now?

This is an amazing intiative Sandeep. As a Strengths Coach I would love to explore your collection and see how it is an additional dimension that can help people better connect with their Strengths— ViM (Vivek Mohile) (@vivekmohile100) July 6, 2019

So I decided to share this work in progress more widely, starting with the strength of Grit/Perseverance. My gratitude to all my Facebook and Twitter friends who have contributed to this collection. My hope is that The Mouse Trap readers will join them in recommending some more great stuff.

So here is English Songs playlist in no particular order for Grit:

First off, my favorite which I used to listen to while preparing for IIT JEE back in the 90’s. Never Say Die by Cliff Richrad

Next, Fight Song by Rachel Platten:

Next up, Greatest by Sia

And then, Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

Next I would like to list the egnlish movies with grit or perseverance with the theme.

  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • The terminal
  • Life is beautiful
  • The pursuit of Happyness
  • The Martian
  • Alive
  • 127 hours
  • Gattaca

Now lets get into some Bollywood mood. Here are some songs inspiring grit:

Soorma Anthem:

Chak De India:

Chale chalo (Lagaan):

Mitwa (Lagaan)

Besabriyaan (M.S. Dhoni)

Ziddi Dil (Mary Kom)

Zinda (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag):

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag title song

Dangal Title track:

Kar har maidan fateh (Sanju):

Yun hi chala chal (Swades):

Sapnon se bhare naina (luck by chance):

Tu naa jaane aas paas hai khuda (anjaan anjaani):

Jo jeeta wahi sikandar title track:

Yeh Safar (1942 a love story):

Yeh honsla (dor):

Lakshya title track:

Ruk jaan nahin (Imtihaan):

Jeevan se na haar o jeenewale (Door ka rahi):

Zindage ki yahi reet hai (Mr India):

Zindagi har kadam ek nayi jung hai (meri jung):

And now for Hindi gritty movies list:

  • M.S. Dhoni
  • Mary Kom
  • Bhaag Milkha Bhaag
  • Soorma
  • Chak De
  • Maanjhi
  • Bajrangi Bhaijaan

Of course I am compiling many other things too like real life exemplars or paragons of strengths and would love to hear form you about them as well as which are your go-to songs and movies when you want to get determination back?

Academic Excellence Due to Efforts or Intelligence: Curious? Read on

There has been a long standing debate in intellectual circles: what leads to superior performance? Is it due to talent or intelligence or is it due to efforts and hard work? Reams of books have been written on the subject including some of my favorites:  ‘Talent is overrated’, ‘Outliers’ etc.

Applied to the classroom the question becomes why did Tom get an A or aced the JEE/GRE , was it because he is smarter that Harry or was it because he studied more and better? Answers to questions like these have profound implications for how children learn and grow-  believing that effort matters more (a growth mindset) will likely make them more persistent in face of failures while having a intelligence is all that matter mindset (a fixed mindset) will perhaps make them more self-conscious and helpless in the face of challenges just beyond their current capabilities.

Long time readers of this blog will know I am more sympathetic to the effort/ hard work/ grit / conscientiousness camp and there are good reasons for that. Consider your middle school classroom: perhaps the smartest / most intelligent student does come first in the class, while the most hard working student comes say second.  Now when you go to say college, then people with a minimum threshold of intelligence / smartness would be the ones who would make it to the college say due to winnowing due to SAT/JEE. Now in college, we can say that most students are already of high intelligence and this would not differentiate between their academic achievements. However, not all will be equally hard working/ conscientious . Those who are both intelligent and conscientious will have an advantage in college and will get higher academic achievement. This is not speculation, there have been studies demonstrating exactly that.

Consider again, the 10,000 hour rule of Anders Ericsson et al. What they found was that if you want to excel in any field you need to put in a minimum of average 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and to reach a genius level another 10,000 hours. Now what is clear is that for achieving well in any domain, say playing guitar, you do need to have some talent or ability in that area; but then you need to do riyaaaz or deliberate  practice to build your skills and if you really want to perform and be counted among the geniuses, perhaps at that level all will have the minimum talent required and you can differentiate yourself mostly by practicing hard and putting in superhuman efforts. Thus, effort is what will really differentiate you.

So is that all there is to superior performance: Talent x Deliberate Practice or more colloquially  Intelligence x Efforts.

When I teach grit and growth mindset to my students, I teach this equation by Angela that ‘effort counts twice’:

Talent x Effort = Skill

Skill x Efforts = Achievement

Today I think its time to modify the equation!!

Enter curiosity! This paper by Tomas Chamoro -Premuzic et al argues and makes a compelling case for adding a third element to the mix: curiosity measured as epistemic curiosity  or Typical Intellectual Engagement (TIE) or need for cognition or Openness to experience. They did a meta -analysis and found that

  1. Intelligence does predict Academic achievement; correlation as high as .35
  2. Efforts measured by Conscientiousness does predict academic achievement: correlation as high as 0.20
  3. Curiosity as measured by TIE does predict academic achievement: correlation as high as 0.20
  4. Intelligence , Curiosity and Efforts have independent effects on academic achievement; none of them mediates the other.
  5. TIE and Intelligence are correlated (remember Openness/ Intellect are aspects of a single trait)
  6. Conscientiousness and TIE are correlated ( general factor of personality?).
  7. Intelligence and Conscientiousness are uncorrelated.

Thus Curiosity is a welcome (and at equal footing)  addition to the (Academic) achievement equation.

I use VIA framework a lot so will try to reframe the equation using VIA strengths. I believe intelligence or talent is best reflected in Critical Thinking and  Creativity. Effort or hard work is best captured by Perseverance and  self control. Last but not the least comes Curiosity and Love of Learning.

Thus , combining the effort counts twice equations, my equation becomes:

(Creativity + Critical Thinking) x (Grit + Self-control) x (Curiosity + Love of Learning)  = Academic Achievement.

Yay! I love it. Hope more people focus on all the components that are needed for high achievement and Curiosity and love of learning to find their seat at the table. Scott Barry Kaufman has written so passionately about Curiosity and its underused role in schools here.

I was recently at the World Positive Education Accelerator (WPEA) AI summit and conference in Fort Wroth, US and a subgroup there had come up with a project requesting all participants to post about their equation. to thrive I hope you like my equation and it has some real impact on how students are guided towards higher achievement. I know that academic achievement is just one part of the equation for students to thrive- the bigger part of well-being and character strengths is also required for thriving/ flourishing, but yes given the current realities academic achievement *is* an important part of the equation!     #EquationToThrive

What type of Self-control/Grit is More Useful?

I recently came across an article titled “More than Resisting Temptation: Beneficial Habits Mediate the Relationship between Self-Control and Positive Life Outcomes” by Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth, which argues that the positive outcomes associated with self-control have more to do with habits for self-regulation, than with in-the-moment exercise of willpower.

Self Control (film)

Self Control (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Self-control is defined by APA as the ability to delay gratification and resist short-term temptations for long-term gains.  Thus the main challenge while exercising self-control is how to take care of inevitable temptations that happen to cross our path. One approach is to build our willpower or in-the-moment inhibitory self-control that is able to overrule the impulses that drive us to engage with the temptation. This reliance on willpower will typically deplete our cognitive resources each time we use this willpower and leave us drained or ego-depleted and less able to resist temptations in the near term.

The other approach is to structure your day and activities in such a way as to minimize the temptations that you are exposed to. There is a five step process that is recommended to self-regulate. Start with selecting the situation. If you want to study , study in the library where distractions are likely to be minimal. The next is situation modification. If you cant study in library and have to study in living room, turn off the TV and put your remote away to minimize distractions. The next step is selective attention, where if you have TV turned on (due to n number of reasons) and still want to study you selectively attend to your textbook/ study notes and do not attend to the TV noise in the background.  If the earlier three stages are not available, or you don’t have an opportunity to use them then comes cognitive re-framing; maybe you can’t turn off the TV and are not able to resist watching it over say studying for math which seems hard and boring. You can re-frame studying as preparing for a better future, which hopefully inspires you; and watching TV as wasting time. The last step in this framework is to rely on brute-force willpower to turn off the TV and go back to studying. This last recourse of using willpower is to be exercised and relied on , only if all else (the earlier steps ) fail.

Thus, its evident that self-regulation is best implemented by having good habits of selecting and modifying situations to minimize temptations etc. Also, its better to use your willpower to create healthy habits like exercising everyday and letting the subconscious take care of executing that on auto-pilot, once the habit has been formed, than to rely on conscious inhibitory self-control.

From this, I propose the following structure for self control:

  1. The main challenge is resisting temptations
  2. One way to do so is by creating habits that minimize exposure to temptations or that test oneself.
  3. Another way to do so is to rely on willpower or brute force in-the-moment inhibitory self-control to resist temptations.

There is now some research available that shows that the self-report self-control we measure, and which is associated with all sorts of positive outcomes (see PDF), primarily measures the habit or auto-pilot self-control rather than the state self-control. The in-the-moment or state self-control is not such a good predictor of future positive outcomes.

Now lets think for a moment about a related but different concept, Grit, which is defined as passion and perseverance for long term goals; and which again has been shown to be a predictor of all sorts of good outcomes.

By analogy I have come up with the following structure for Grit:

  1. The main challenge is persevering despite obstacles/ failures
  2. One way to do so is by minimizing possibility of failure by careful planning (orderliness) and habits to circumvent obstacles or bulldoze through then by working hard (industriousness). Together this can be construed as the trait Conscientiousness.
  3. Another way to do so is to rely on ordinary magic of in-the-moment resilience to bounce back from failures and getting up and restarting after colliding with an obstacle.

By analogy, I believe that the self-report Grit that is associated with all sorts of positive outcomes will correlate more with trait contentiousness rather than the in-the-moment ability to be resilient. And it follows that it is better to create habits of orderliness and industriousness rather than relying on our ability to bounce back and get up after falling.

I should perhaps stop here, but I can also see parallels with what I think is the reverse of having Self-control. Too much not having self-control, or being impulse driven may be associated with the psychological disorders clubbed under addiction.

There has now been a lot of research showing that addiction is not so much about dependence on substances or biologically based but due to lack of satisfying interpersonal and social relationships.

With that in mind, and extending the analogy, here is what I propose to be the structural quality of all types of addiction, whether related to substance abuse or behavioral (internet etc) in nature:

  1.  The main challenge to remaining addicted is availability of satisfying relationships.
  2. One way to to remain addicted is habitually prioritizing one activity/ substance to the exclusion of others (salience), so that the joy from other activities like satisfying relationships is not experienced at all.
  3. Another way to remain addicted is to get so much in-the-moment high form indulging in the activity/ using the substance, that it overrules any comparisons with the satisfaction derived from relationships.

If I had to go on a limb, I would say that the former system which relies on habits or prioritizing a particular activity over others is related to the ‘wanting’ system , while the latter system which is related to experiencing in the moment highs is related to  the ‘liking’ system. And we all know that the ‘wanting’ system is more powerful than the ‘liking’ system. So most likely addiction is maintained by the former system where a habitual pattern of (mis) use has been formed.

So what are the takeaways? Build good habits and do not rely on in-the-moment strengths or capabilities to tide you over in times of crises. And measures of these good habits are what would drive success and lead to all sorts of positive outcomes.

The Making of a Genius: Required Ingredients

What goes into the making of a genius? More mundanely, what factors are required for success in any field? Your answer will differ based on what factors you consider to be the most important for success.

Photo of the obverse of a Fields Medal made by...

Photo of the obverse of a Fields Medal made by Stefan Zachow for the International Mathematical Union (IMU), showing a bas relief of Archimedes (as identified by the Greek text) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No one can deny the large role that intelligence and talent play in the making of a genius, or to achieve moderate levels of success compared to peers. We can probably club these two factors together as ability, that is more or less inborn, and is not very easy to increase or amenable to interventions.

Let me be a be it more specific. I consider ability to be made of two components: specific talent in a particular domain, say singing talent or mathematical talent; and fluid intelligence, or the ability to solve problems in real time using cognitive resources like working memory and typically measured by IQ. While talent is domain specific, fluid intelligence is domain general, but both will be required to be successful in a domain. Intelligence (fluid) will enable one to learn at an exceptional rate and also to learn form ones mistakes and improve.

Both talent and intelligence have been shown to explain up to 50 % of variance, in say, academic performance. Thus they are definitely required to achieve extraordinary success/ genius.

However, another stream of research informs us that putting in 10,000 hours or more of deliberate practice is what does the magic. As per research by Andres Ericsson and colleagues to achieve and expertise in any domain you need 10,000 hours or more of focused, deliberate practice. Here two things are important to note:  you are not putting in brute force efforts blindly, but following a process of deliberate practice (picking up a weakness, working on it constantly to improve soliciting feedback etc) and the second is that you do put in more than 10,000 hours of such efforts to attain some expertise and then again 10,000 hours more to achieve genius level expertise.

Thus, one can subsume these factors under the common label effort: comprising of a daily ritual of deliberate practice or Riyaaz or smart efforts; and a long term fruits of putting in 10,000 or 20,000 hrs of such efforts in the form of expertise or domain specific crystallized intelligence.

Both indulging in deliberate practice daily and building expertise by putting in the required hours are correlated with genius level expert performance or success.  In more mundane terms, if you really want to make contributions to mathematics such that they deserve a Fields Medal, you need to systematically work on which areas of Maths need improving and actually spend hours daily honing your maths skills for a few years before hoping to get one.

and of course as Angela Duckworth says, talent * effort = skill and skill* effort = performance, so effort counts twice and is an important determinant of success.

But this brings us to the question is effort same as grit, another factor that has been shown to predict success/ achievement/ genius?

While to the naive mind they may appear same; to me effort is willingness and ability to work smart and work hard; while grit is more about being passionate about a particular super-ordinate goal and getting back on track and showing persistence in the face of setbacks/ adversity.

And of course another personality factor or character strength that is similarly predictive of success is self-control. Self-control is the ability to resist temptations and forego pleasure-in-the-now for gains-in-the-future. It reliably predicts success in many domains and is domain general trait.  Grit however is more domain specific. Also while Self-control works on a shorter time scale, Girt works on a longer time scale.

Both can be subsumed under goal-commitment: a in the moment domain general self control factor and a long term domain specific grit factor.

And this brings us to the final set of factors which are equally important for success: enjoying and being engrossed in what you are doing and being curious/exploratory about the things you don’t know/ haven’t experienced yet. These are emotional-motivational processes that ensure that you actually do put in the efforts required to meet the goal commitments and to actualize your ability.

Recent research has shown that a hungry mind is very important for predicting academic success. This hungry mind is conceptualized as intellectual curiosity. Curiosity as initially defined by Todd Kashadan et al was comprised of Exploration (or Curiosity as they define now per se) and Absorption. Later Todd et al have disowned absorption as a part of curiosity, and they are right to do so, but given the high correlations between  absorption and exploration, I think they were on to something. Important for us is to remember that curiosity or the appetitive strivings for novelty, complexity,uncertainty and ambiguity; and Absorption or flow or full engagement in specific activities, taken together are again strong predictors of success/ achievement.

Thus, we have a fourth big factor predicting and causing success, viz Engagement: one sub-factor of which is a domain/ task specific flow or absorption and the other a domain general or task independent curiosity or love of learning or intrinsic motivation.

With that we can probably summarize the ingredients required to make a genius:

  1. Ability, both talent and intelligence
  2. Effort, both daily deliberate practice and 10,000 hours of expertise
  3. Goal commitment, both self control and grit
  4. Engagement, flow as well as curiosity

As an aside, this fits my ABCD model: Engagement or flow/curiosity are Affective in nature; Effort is Behavioral; Ability (intelligence) I consider as Cognitive and goal-commitment as Dynamic/motivational.

So, what are you going to do different to achieve extraordinary performance after having learned this? Will you work on your curiosity, put in more hours of deliberate practice , ensure you are feeling flow and absorption or work or your self-control muscle. There are many paths to greatness, and you can choose to focus on one or more to take you where you need to be!

Book Review: The Grit Guide for Teens

Every once in a while you stumble across a book that is very much relevant to your present circumstances and as if written with you in mind; The Grit Guide for Teens happens to be such a book that is proving really valuable to me in my current endeavor of championing positive education.

Some of you might know, that I am currently executing a long term positive education intervention in a school in Pune, which is structured around VIA character strengths. One of the strengths we are focusing on is Grit, the target audience is teenagers and this book has been God-send!

Along side Angela Duckowrth’s book, which I reviewed earlier, this book has been instrumental in designing activities and introspection exercises to which the teens can relate and embody in their daily lives.

The book is in the form of a workbook and is very well structured; each chapter contains multiple activities that draw the reader in and at the same time help build their grit muscles with a relentless focus on clarifying complex concepts without using any jargon.

Caren Baruch-Feldman, makes very novel and innovative contributions, while writing the workbook; she extends the concept of grit to emotional, social and wellness domains apart from the usual suspects of academic and extracurricular domains. When the teens think of being gritty, they usually think about achieving a goal that is either in academic domain (get better at math – I know this is not a SMART goal) or in extracurricular domain (become a good guitarist / get better at cricket) ; however Caren reminds us that grit can be shown in emotional domain (be good a controlling my anger), social domain ( overcome shyness to initiate and sustain connections) or in wellness domain (stick to an exercise regimen to become fit and healthy); these are all my examples, Caren embeds the different domains based references throughout the book, so that one has an idea of how grit can be accomplished and plays out in all five domains.

She is also a clinical psychologist with tons of experience with CBT/REBT and uses that to add additional nuance, when it comes to developing the right mindset for grit- growth mindset , the power of yet and optimistic mindset is conjoined with a focus on thinking traps and figuring out if the thought is real, useful, or something you will tell a friend if he or she was in the same situation? These are powerful tools, one is providing to the kids, and which will help them in good stead in the future.

Caren also makes it clear that if you really want to exhibit grit you have to develop the right mindset and then go forth and execute stuff (like do deliberate practice to hone your craft). There is also adequate coverage of strategies for remaining focused on your goal, by using things like Advantage cards and overcoming temptation by using strategies like situation selection, situation modification etc. She draws upon proven techniques from allied fields in psychology like self-control and habit-formation etc apart from a focus on increasing grit per se. That makes for a holistic package when it comes to ensuring success by the teen.

While I read it mostly from the point of developing activities and using the material with my school students, I could readily see how relate able it would be for the teens themselves and how they will be so much richer for having gone thorough the book and completed all the activities. If you have a teen and his or her school does not promote positive education, yet, then you ought to buy this for your teen; it will be money well spent.

The only lament I have, why don’t we have many more such books, directed towards teens, for each of the VIA strength!! Hope the publishers develop a series around VIA strengths- we do need such workbooks for teens! Here is wishing so much success to the book, that others get inspired and write about all the other strengths and tools that the teens also need desperately!

Book Reviews: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

I have read quite a few books that fall into the ‘hard work triumphs intelligence’ camp, such as ‘Peak’ by Anders Ericsson, ‘Talent is overrated‘ by Geoff Colvin and ‘Outliers‘ by Malcolm Gladwell. And I am more than sympathetic to that viewpoint, however I have always believed in a  more nuanced picture. The ability to work hard, is again, just part of the equation explaining outstanding achievements, there is more than enough room for other non-cognitive factors like passion, hope, purpose etc to impact performance.

English: Millstone grit

English: Millstone grit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And that is what Angela tries to do in Grit. She is obsessed, in a harmonious way, with what leads to success and high/ exceptional achievements. After showing that talent/intelligence/ IQ only explains part of the picture,  she makes a strong case for non-cognitive factors as being more predictive of success in life than the so called cognitive factors.

Angela defines Grit as a combination of Passion and Perseverance. Passion is built by discovering, and more importantly, cultivating interest. Another source of passion is when you feel what you are doing is purposeful or helpful to others and connects to a bigger whole. Perseverance, on the other hand, can be cultivated by being optimistic/ hopeful, developing a growth mindset and indulging in deliberate practice.

Now, some people have accused Angela of being too expansionist by including hope and growth mindset and purpose and what not in her theory of grit! I think that criticism is uncalled for- she is determined to find what makes people successful and what are its antecedents and mediators. If hope/ growth mindset is an antecedent to gritty behavior, I believe it makes sense for her to touch upon those subjects.

Some have claimed that grit is not yet ready for mainstreaming and that the damage one does by focusing solely on grit is more than its benefits. Angela, in her conclusion admits that she never intended or believes that grit is the only trait worth having; first there is a problem with the goal of success being a be all and end all; other goals like happiness, morality and meaning are legitimate both as ends in themselves and as predictors of good outcomes; secondly its not established that apart form IQ and grit, other factors like creativity etc are not that important for success.

One thing I found surprising was Angela’s reluctance to admit that too much grit may be harmful; brushing aside John Henryism or the need to disengage from goals at times, she come across as someone too invested in the concept of grit to acknowledge its dark side. The fact that these things are discussed in conclusion doesn’t make things any better. I guess an honest upfront admission of grits limitations as well as its power would help put things in perspective.

That said, I am not at all sympathetic to the many critical reviews of the book that have focused on the downsides of the concept / book to the exclusion of its utility/ strong points. Angela does a wonderful job of explaining her own and others peoples research and how it is related to what we know about who succeeds. She also has beautifully organized the book into sections where we can grow Grit from inside out (as end users)  or outside in (as parents, teachers working with kids etc).

As a matter of fact for those who read the book, but don’t manage the time or don’t have the inclination to go deep into original research, but would like to dig a little deeper, I am currently featuring Angela’s articles on my newly introduced research summary feature and you may like to check some Grit related articles there for now. These articles should give you additional insights about the data and studies that Angela refers in the book.

Also, I believe that Girt is ready for mass market adoption; I myself am running a long term VIA character strengths based positive education initiative for schools, and Grit is an integral part of our offering.

So my recommendation, do read Grit and grow it in yourself and others. It will definitely help you in good stead.

Research Summaries: Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S)

This research summary will be especially attractive to those who have interest in psychometric and would like to see how the concept and measure of grit has evolved. In this paper, Angela Duckworth refines her measurement of grit and establishes the test-retest stability of the concept apart form predictive and  consensual validity.

Animation of a vernier caliper measuring a bolt

Animation of a vernier caliper measuring a bolt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

  1. The authors wanted to come up with a briefer version of the grit scale, which would have better internal consistency and still retain the predictive power and the two factor structure of Consistency of Interests and Perseverance of effort.
  2. As such they dropped 2 items each from both the factor items and retained just 4 items each for each of the factors. The decision to drop the items was taken on the basis of analyzing data across four studies as delineated in their earlier paper, whose research summary is present here.  The newer 8 item Grit scale called Grrit -S retained predictive power and showed the same two factor structure.
  3. Similar to their earlier paper, they did an online study measuring grit-S/grit -O, big five traits as predictors and career changes and educational levels as outcome variables. Grit -S correlated with conscientiousness, but was still able to predict the outcomes over and beyond conscientiousness.
  4. Using the same online procedure, they asked subjects as well as informants (their friends  family members) to complete the Grit-S/Grit -O measures and established the consensual validity of the scale.
  5. In another study with students, they measured Grit-S/Grit -O  for two consecutive springs and established the test-retest stability of the scale as well as its predictive validity where GPA obtained was an outcome variable and so was the number of hours watching television.
  6. The next study was similar to the West point study they had done for earlier paper, but with grit-S predicting who makes it through the beast barracks.
  7. The last study was again a followup study of the national spelling bee competitors, this time with a new cohort, and using a new scale and led to similar results, whereby girt predicted who reached which round etc. based partly on who practiced how much and had prior experience participating.
  8. So, if you were looking for some more areas/ examples of the predictive power of grit, this doesn’t add much to what Anagela et al had presented in the earlier paper, but it does reconfirm finding with a shorter measure that also appears to be a better measure of grit.

so, if you are the one who is fascinated by how scales evolve, do check out this paper here.

Research Summaries: Positive predictors of teacher effectiveness

If you have ever wondered what goes on to make an effective teacher, this research paper by Angela Duckworth and colleagues, throws some light on the issue.

English: LaPlace, La., October 8, 2005 - Dan W...

English: LaPlace, La., October 8, 2005 – Dan Waldman (left), left without a job as a high school teacher at Signature Centers High School in New Orleans when it was flooded by Hurricane Katrina, has been hired by FEMA and is now at the LaPlace Disaster Recovery Center, 160 Belle Terre, and is in training to become a DRC manager. He is a member of the “Teach For America” program that places new teachers into inner city and low-income area schools around the nation. Win Henderson / FEMA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  1. Teaching is a stressful job; in majority of cases, you are not able to see the impact of your work immediately or at all; hence the frequent teacher burnout or high attrition.
  2. Traditionally its thought that competence in subject matter or certifications would be a good predictor of teacher effectiveness. However , these measures typically fail to distinguish those performing well from those performing just bare minimal.
  3. When one looks at other factors like personality factors, extarverted or ‘attractive’ teachers get better ratings from students/ observers; however they don’t have any real impact on actual student performance when measured by gains in knowledge.
  4. This study looked at grit, life satisfaction and optimism of teachers as predictors of their effectiveness which will distinguish high performing teachers from the mediocre.
  5. They conducted a prospective longitudinal study wherein, grit, life satisfaction and optimistic explanatory style of novice Teach for America teachers was measured before they started school year. The gains in academic performance of the students they taught was used as an indicator of their effectiveness at the school year end.
  6. Grit, the ability to work hard under challenging circumstances, may be relevant to teacher effectiveness as they do face constant challenges, and so this was measured using the 8 item short Grit scale.
  7. Happy people do well in a number of different work settings as those who are in a positive mood are more likely to work towards their goals;  also they have  more resources to cope with stress and challenges, as per broaden and build theory of positive emotions. Also, the energy and enthusiasm of those teachers satisfied with life may be contagious and make students happy and thus more productive. Life satisfaction was measured by Satisfaction with Life Scale.
  8. Optimistic explanatory style may be relevant as when faced with repeated challenges those with pessimistic explanatory style may become helpless and give up, as compared to those with optimistic style who may remain resilient.  This was measured using Attributional Style Questionnaire.
  9. All three positive traits predicted teacher effectiveness.  When all were simultaneously used to predict the teacher effectiveness outcome, only grit and life satisfaction were significant predictors. It thus seems that optimism works via grit and life satisfaction.
  10. As this is a prospective longitudinal study the results do hint at causality, though reverse causality like effectiveness leading to life satisfaction cannot be ruled out.
  11. The authors conclude by suggesting that schools should perhaps hire for grit, happiness and optimism too. This is where I get a little uncomfortable; in an ideal world, I would welcome anyone who has a passion for teaching (the passion part of grit is taken care of 🙂 ) and equip them with tools like training to increase perseverance, hope and happiness to make them more effective. I am always ambivalent about measuring a trait and then hiring for it. To be fair the authors also suggest interventions in schools to increase grit , hope etc of teachers. I wish there was more of latter than former in the world that we live in.

So if you found this interesting and want to dig deep, check out the original paper here.

Research Summaries: Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals

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

Monkey Grit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

  5. 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.

  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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).
  10. 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).
  11. 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)
  12. 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.