Rejected Letter to PNAS (original) (raw)

Grit: 2.0: An incremental validity study towards a new theory of grit

2019

The theory of grit (currently defined as the combination of passion and perseverance over the long term) is one of the more recent developments in personality psychology that has generated a lot of buzz and interest, both from the general public as well as the academia. To date, there are a plethora of studies advancing grit as a significant predictor of various positive outcomes including subjective well-being (SWB). While most of the grit studies are of high performance in context, this study argues that grit can also be developed and used even in high-stress human conditions (HSC) such as adversity, suffering, or trauma. Hence, this study seeks to propose a new theory of grit called “Grit 2.0” that encompasses both high performance and HSC contexts and aims to develop a more holistic theory of grit that posits a multi-factor model that incorporates principles of trait theory, paradox theory, and positive psychology. The study focuses on adult participants primarily in the United States and uses both convenience and targeted sampling methods as well as several validated scales to determine the relationship between HSC and SWB and how the current theory of grit and the proposed Grit 2.0 play a mediating role between these two variables. The study also discusses the practical and theoretical implications of its results, the limitations of the study as well as suggestions for future research. Keywords: grit, passion, perseverance, paradox theory, trait theory, subjective well being

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

2016

Why do naturally talented people frequently fail to reach their potential while other far less gifted individuals go on to achieve amazing things? The secret to outstanding achievement is not talent, but a passionate persistence. In other words, grit. MacArthur Genius Award-winning psychologist Angela Duckworth shares fascinating new revelations about who succeeds in life and why. Based on her cutting-edge research, Duckworth shows how many people achieve remarkable things not just by relying on innate natural talent, but by practising what she calls grit. She then offers a Grit Formula to help anyone to become more gritty, focusing on six key factors: hope, effort, precision, passion, ritual and prioritisation. She reveals: why people who test high for talent often fail to achieve their potential, and why people who do not test high for talent often "overachieve" what others expect them to do; how grit can be learned, whatever your IQ or circumstances; why stubbornness is...

What Shall We Do About Grit? A Critical Review of What We Know and What We Don’t Know

Educational Researcher, 2018

Grit is a construct that is widely studied by educational researchers and that has generally been enthusiastically received by educational practitioners. This essay highlights that many of the core claims about grit have either been unexamined or are directly contradicted by the accumulated empirical evidence. Specifically, there appears to be no reason to accept the combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals into a single grit construct, nor is there any support for the claim that grit is a particularly good predictor of success and performance in an educational setting or that grit is likely to be responsive to interventions. I describe avenues for future research on grit that may help to clarify if grit can contribute to our understanding of success and performance. These avenues include examinations of possible configural relationships between passion and perseverance, whether grit or grit facets represent necessary but not sufficient conditions for performance,...

GRIT META-ANALYSIS 1 Much Ado about Grit

2016

Grit has been presented as a higher-order personality trait that is highly predictive of both success and performance and distinct from other traits such as conscientiousness. This paper provides a meta-analytic review of the grit literature with a particular focus on the structure of grit and the relation between grit and performance, retention, conscientiousness, cognitive ability, and demographic variables. Our results based on 584 effect sizes from 88 independent samples representing 66,807 individuals indicate that the higher-order structure of grit is not confirmed, that grit is only moderately correlated with performance and retention, and that grit is very strongly correlated with conscientiousness. We also find that the perseverance of effort facet has significantly stronger criterion validities than the consistency of interest facet and that perseverance of effort explains variance in academic performance even after controlling for conscientiousness. In aggregate our resul...

Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature

Grit has been presented as a higher-order personality trait that is highly predictive of both success and performance and distinct from other traits such as conscientiousness. This paper provides a meta-analytic review of the grit literature with a particular focus on the structure of grit and the relation between grit and performance, retention, conscientiousness, cognitive ability, and demographic variables. Our results based on 584 effect sizes from 88 independent samples representing 66,807 individuals indicate that the higher-order structure of grit is not confirmed, that grit is only moderately correlated with performance and retention, and that grit is very strongly correlated with conscientiousness. We also find that the perseverance of effort facet has significantly stronger criterion validities than the consistency of interest facet and that perseverance of effort explains variance in academic performance even after controlling for conscientiousness. In aggregate our results suggest that interventions designed to enhance grit may only have weak effects on performance and success, that the construct validity of grit is in question, and that the primary utility of the grit construct may lie in the perseverance facet.