Grit (personality trait)

Definition of grit

Grit is defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals." Building upon biographical collections of famous leaders in history, researchers and scientists have reached similar conclusions about high achieving individuals. Specifically, those individuals who were deemed more successful and influential than their contemporary counterparts typically possessed traits above and beyond that of normal ability. While ability was still critically important, these individuals also possessed "zeal" and "persistence of motive and effort." Duckworth and colleagues (2007) believe this dual-component of grit to be a crucial differentiator from similar constructs. Grit is conceptualized as a stable trait that does not require immediate positive feedback. Individuals high in grit are able to maintain their determination and motivation over long periods despite experiences with failure and adversity. Their passion and commitment towards the long-term objective is the overriding factor that provides the stamina required to "stay the course" amid challenges and set-backs.

Grit and positive psychology

Grit also ties in with positive psychology and in particular, with perseverance. As mentioned earlier, the ability to stick with and pursue a goal over a long period is an important aspect of grit. This area of positive psychology has been interested in the process of perseverance as a positive indicator of long term success. A 2014 study by Von Culin, Tsukayama and Duckworth, found that individual differences in grit and its two component facets—perseverance of effort and consistency of interests over time—may derive in part from differences in what makes people happy.

Grit and intelligence

One of the best predictors of future achievement has been intelligence. This relationship has been found in scholastic achievement as well as in job performance. As such, one might expect that grit would be strongly correlated with intelligence. In fact, this prompted one of the early questions asked in grit research, "Why do some individuals accomplish more than others of equal intelligence?". Somewhat surprisingly, in four separate samples, grit was found to be either orthogonal to or slightly inversely correlated with intelligence. This means that grit, unlike many traditional measures of performance is not tied to intelligence. As the researchers have suggested, this helps explain why some very intelligent individuals do not consistently perform well over long periods.

Grit and personality measures

The grit measure has been compared to the Big Five personality model, which are a group of broad personality dimensions consisting of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In one study by Duckworth and Quinn (2009), the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S) and 12-item self-report measure of grit (Grit–O) measuring grit was strongly correlated with conscientiousness (r = .77, p <.001 and r = .73, p <.001). A large study of twins measuring both conscientiousness and grit found that they had a genetic correlation of 0.86. A subsequent meta-analysis found that the grit was functionally a measure of conscientiousness. Despite these high correlations with conscientiousness, it is suggested that grit is more strongly associated with longer term and multi-year goals such as education. Large studies suggest only weak links of grit to these long term goals, much smaller than links to IQ and to conscientiousness. Grit is also similar to need for achievement, but is suggested to relate to extremely long-term goals pursued without positive feedback, while need for achievement is suggested to lack this long-term component.

Comparison with related psychological constructs

Traditional constructs in this area include perseverance, hardiness, resilience, ambition, self-control, and need for achievement. Grit has been argued to be distinguishable from each of these in the following ways. Perseverance is the steadfast pursuit of a task, mission, or journey in spite of obstacles, discouragement, or distraction. In contrast, grit is argued to be a trait of perseverance. Grit enables an individual to persevere in accomplishing a goal despite obstacles over an extended period. When compared with the construct of persistence, grit adds a component of passion for the goal. This goal passion also contributes to the ability of the individual to sustain effort over the long term.

Maddi (2006) defines hardiness as a combination of attitudes that provide the courage and motivation to do the hard, strategic work of turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities. While grit is primarily a measure of an individual's ability to persist in obtaining a specific goal over an extended time period (Duckworth et al., 2007), hardiness refers to an individual's ability to persist through difficult circumstances and does not address the individual's long term persistence toward a specific goal. Maddi (2006) developed a theoretical model of hardiness as a tool for developing resilience.

Resilience is a dynamic process in which an individual overcomes significant adversity, usually in the form of a life changing event or difficult personal circumstances. Resilience can be conceptualized as an adaptive response to a challenging situation. Grit involves maintaining goal focused effort for extended periods of time, often while facing adversity but does not require a critical incident. Importantly, grit is conceptualized as a trait while resilience is a dynamic process. Finally, resilience has been almost exclusively studied in children (cf. Luther, Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993) who are born into "at-risk" situations. Although resilience researchers recognize that adults likely demonstrate resilience in a similar manner to children, the resilience process has not been studied in a mature population.

Ambition is broadly defined as the desire for attainment, power, or superiority. In contrast to ambition, grit is not associated with seeking fame or external recognition for achievements. Ambition is often associated with a desire for fame. Unlike ambitious individuals, gritty individuals do not seek to distinguish themselves from other people, but to obtain personal goals.

Self-control an aspect of inhibitory control, is the ability to control one's emotions and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses. Duckworth & Gross (2014) use a hierarchical-goal perspective on self-control and grit to show that while both these constructs entail aligning actions with intentions, they operate in different ways and over different timescales and are distinct psychological mechanisms that are key determinants of success.

McClelland (1961) describes need for achievement as a drive to complete manageable goals that enable the individual to receive immediate feedback. In contrast to need for achievement, gritty individuals consciously set long-term goals that are difficult to attain and do not waver from these difficult goals, regardless of the presence of feedback. Additionally, need for achievement has been studied for almost 50 years and has been found to positively correlate to self-efficacy and learning goal orientation. These links have not yet been tested in the grit literature.

Scientific findings

The primary scientific findings on grit come from Duckworth and colleagues' examination of grit as an individual difference trait capable of predicting long-term success. It was proposed that individuals who possess a drive to tirelessly work through challenges, failures, and adversity to achieve set goals and are uniquely positioned to reach higher achievements than others who lack similar stamina. In a series of six studies Duckworth et al. proposed, developed, and tested a two-factor grit scale with notable results. In addition to validating their grit scale, the authors also found support suggesting that grit provided incremental predictive validity for education and age above and beyond the Big Five personality traits (Study 2); that higher levels of grit were more highly associated with cumulative grade point average (GPA) in an Ivy league sample when compared to those with lower grit levels (r = .25, p < .01; Study 3); that grit predicted retention after their first summer in two classes of cadets at the United States Military Academy (Study 4); and that participants in a National Spelling Bee with higher grit scores typically work harder and longer than less gritty peers, ultimately resulting in better performance. This series of studies provides empirical evidence that an individual difference conceptualized as grit can account for significant variance in performance across a variety of settings. Although it was argued that grit predicted beyond the typical and unrelated cognitive construct of IQ and the Big 5 personality construct of conscientiousness these claims were later called into question by a meta-analysis.

In 2009, Duckworth and Quinn found additional support for the grit construct when they developed and validated a more condensed version of the Grit Scale (Grit-S) by removing four of the previous items and improving its psychometric properties. Re-using samples from the data collected in their 2007 studies, the authors found similar results for the relationship between grit and educational attainment, GPA, retention in college, and success in a national spelling bee competition.

In 2016, the largest study of grit, conducted in over 4,500 16-year old twins in the United Kingdom found that grit (measured by the Grit-S) accounted for only one half of one percent (0.5%) of highest-stakes outcomes (school grades) after IQ and personality (in particular conscientiousness) were accounted for.

Also in 2016, a meta-analytic synthesis of prior empirical research on grit by Crede, Tynan, and Harms summarized data from 88 independent samples and over 66,000 individuals and found that grit is only weakly related to success and almost identical to the personality trait known as conscientiousness. Crede et al. conclude that the contribution of grit to the prediction of success is very limited. Crede et al., also noted that the combination of passion and perseverance into an overall grit construct could not be justified.

Future directions

The United States military believes that this and similar constructs may assist in explaining why some soldiers are better equipped to handle the psychological trauma of combat. Specific questions being addressed include the additional cognitive and non-cognitive traits that complement grit; effects of emotional and cognitive load moderating success or failure in the struggle with obstacles that block the path to goal achievement.