Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Distinct but commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include "perseverance", "hardiness", "resilience", "ambition", "need for achievement" and "conscientiousness". These constructs can be conceptualized as individual differences related to the accomplishment of work rather than talent or ability. This distinction was brought into focus in 1907 when William James challenged the field to further investigate how certain individuals are capable of accessing richer trait reservoirs enabling them to accomplish more than the average person, but the construct dates back at least to Francis Galton, and the ideals of persistence and tenacity have been understood as a virtue at least since Aristotle.
Research published in 2016 found grit to be almost identical to the trait known as conscientiousness, and concluded that the contribution of grit to the prediction of success is very limited and that the combination of passion and perseverance into one trait is unjustifiable.
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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 setbacks.
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Literature comparisons
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. The researchers suggested that 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.
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.
Salvatore 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.
David 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 and controversy
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. These findings however were subsequently largely discredited by Crede et al. in 2016.
Initially it was proposed that individuals who possess a drive to tirelessly work through challenges, failures, and adversity to achieve set goals 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 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. concluded 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.
Since 2014, grit has been the subject of critical commentary and debate in Education Week, with contributors discussing the strengths and weaknesses of how the idea of grit has been used by educators.
Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, in his 2016 book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, criticized the tendency to credit persistent practice to traits such as grit or willpower; he wrote: "It may seem natural to assume that these people who maintain intense practice schedules for years have some rare gift of willpower or 'grit' or 'stick-to-itiveness' that the rest of us just lack, but that would be a mistake for two very compelling reasons." The first reason is that motivation is a situation-specific attribute: People generally find it easier to practice in some areas than in others. The second reason is that grit and willpower are traits that are assigned to someone after the fact, for example: John practiced persistently for years, so he must have incredible grit. But, Ericsson explained: "This sort of circular thinking--'The fact that I couldn't keep practicing indicates that I don't have enough willpower, which explains why I couldn't keep practicing'--is worse than useless; it is damaging in that it can convince people that they might as well not even try." Instead of attributing success to grit or willpower, Ericsson recommended analyzing the various factors that shape a person's motivation in a given situation.
See also
- Patience
- Prudence
- Temperance (virtue)
References
Further reading
- Duckworth, Angela (2016). Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (First ed.). Scribner. ISBN 9781501111105. OCLC 928889169.
External links
- "Angela Lee Duckworth". angeladuckworth.com.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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