The grittiest kids are slightly less talented. If you have a really gifted child, it does not mean that they are necessarily hard-working. Grit is one of the strongest predictors of success. All this comes from the research of social scientist Angela Duckworth who is one of the most widely quoted experts on the psychology of achievement. What makes some people work hard to succeed? I spoke to her to find out more about grit – the secret sauce that drives high achievers.
Abhijit: Is Grit the same as Persistence or Perseverance?
Angela: I define Grit as having passion for a long-term goal and then working really hard consistently over an extended period of time. Gritty people work towards goals that would take years to achieve. If you are a person who is just working hard and don’t have a consistent goal to guide you, then you don’t have one half of grit. Likewise, you may have the passion for something, but not the resilience. Some people drop out of things they do and it is not because they had a serious setback or something terrible has happened but because of the slow progress. Like in science, you could be working on something that could take years and where you make only a tiny bit of progress every day. You need perseverance for that even though you don’t need resilience. Perseverance or persistence is also a part of grit.
Abhijit: You have talked about the importance of self-control in building Grit. Does it always lead to superior academic performance in a child?
Angela: We have not really done studies on kids on this subject. What does Grit look like when children are four or five years old? There are some five-year-olds who are more persistent when they do something hard or have more consistent interests. This may only be moderately correlated to their Grit levels later because kids do change a lot. The really impulsive child is likely to struggle with Grit later on. Does it lead to academically superior performance? I don’t think so as these are not the only things that matter. There are other factors such as mental health, IQ and ability to get along socially that also influences outcomes.
Abhijit: The world that kids live in today is full of social media, which is so distracting. Is the wide adoption of social media proof of dropping levels of Grit and self-control?
Angela: Some people tell me that it is. That would be called a “cohort effect”. Growing up in 2014 era is different from growing up in 1985. I don’t know if Grit and self-control are dropping. Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley are very good at creating things that attract our attention and entertain us. There are industries that are designed to gives us tasty, salty, fatty, sugary foods or fun programs to watch or games to play. We know these things are not good for us in the long run. As a social scientist, I have not crunched data on it. But there are more things than ever to divert our attention. As a parent what can I do to counter those distractions? Maybe limit the availability of these distractions.
Abhijit: Another theory of development says that when we provide the kids with a variety of experiences and “bombard” their senses, it helps them to be creative and develop more ideas. Is Grit inversely correlated with curiosity?
Angela: When we study Grit, we primarily study adults. The correlation between Grit and “Openness to Experience” (curiosity) tends to be very low. It is not negative but it is the lowest correlation between any of the personality variables. I can’t say if Gritty people are not curious. But I know that curious people can get bored. While I am never going to study this, I can say that if you are gritty and you are curious, you could be a great scientist or a great artist. But if you are not curious, but you are gritty, you won’t be productive in the creative fields. Really successful scientists and artists are both (gritty and curious). That’s a rare combination.
Abhijit: Is Grit learnable (ie I could learn on my own) or is it teachable (ie someone could teach me)?
Angela: Everything we study in psychology is a function of genes and environment. We follow the social norms of what we see around us. It is not easy to change culture. Maybe some beliefs can be learned or unlearned. For example, we can learn that talent is not the only thing that makes people successful. It is as much about Grit and hard work.
When you are using deliberate practice to get better, it is not that enjoyable. Gritty people will use deliberate practice to get better. Whereas when a musician is performing, they are likely to be in flow. They are not that far from their capability that they are making mistakes like the way they do in deliberate practice. When you are practicing and working on my weaknesses, it does not feel like flow. Gritty people do deliberate practice so that they can experience flow while performing.
Abhijit: How do we hire gritty people? What should we be looking for?
Angela: If people are gritty, they should have demonstrated it in something. It could be in their hobbies, in their relationships, their work etc. But just asking people about a failure or something hard they worked on may not be the way. It is too easy to mistake someone’s glib articulation for the real thing or put someone who finds it easy and is humbled by the advantage over others who may be gritty but more humble at sharing it.
We developed a measure called “follow through” that was developed by ETS in 1985 for high school seniors. They looked at extra-curricular activities and advancement. They looked for someone’s ability to continue an activity on a multi-year basis while making impressive advances during that time.
When we used the same information for novice teachers, it predicts their staying in teaching, their being an effective teacher – all the patterns of people with grit. So maybe someone can test their grit by being an amazingly dedicated parent while someone else may express it in their work or by improving themselves in triathlon over the years. You would get more value in a behavioral or a biographical measure rather than through a questionnaire.
Find out how much grit you have – take the test here <click this>
Join me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri
Tell us your own story of grit. Leave a comment.