Grit
When most people hear the word "grit," they think of the gritty United States Marshal Rooster Cogburn in the movie True Grit (or maybe they don't, but I sure do), so does that mean that a person that has grit is as bold, brave, and badass as the character played by John Wayne? It kind of does. (Admittedly, not in a lot of ways, but who's going to discount an opportunity to liken themselves to John Wayne?) Not all people with grit are heros in the Wild West, but they are unyielding, determined, and committed to their goal. Their grit is why they withstand hardship and work until they accomplish their goals, whether that means helping Mattie Ross track down Tom Chaney, the man who killed her father, and "Lucky" Ned Pepper to bring them to justice and not giving up when Mattie is bitten by a snake or kidnapped by Chaney, Pepper, and his gang despite being a hardened one-eyed alcoholic with two failed marriages or being the first one in a family to complete a college education despite having to work 30 hours a week and struggling with unsupportive parents. Grit in this case is a characteristic that was created by Angela Duckworth, who became a postdoctoral student in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania, where Martin Seligman was also working, in 2002 and is now an assistant professor there. An excerpt from her application essay to Penn read, "the problem, I think, is not only the schools but also the students themselves. Here's why: learning is hard. True, learning is fun, exhilarating and gratifying - but it is also often daunting, exhausting, and sometimes discouraging... To help chronically low-performing but intelligent students, educators and parents must first recognize that character is at least as important as intellect."
Duckworth's initial studies at Penn were on on self-discipline, in which she found that self-assessed discipline tests were more indicative of the students in her study's final GPAs than their IQ scores. She followed up her work with self-control with studies on motivation. This was the foundational work in psychology from which she sensed that some third characteristic relating to self-control and motivation had to explain the consistent discrepancies that existed between people with similar levels of self-control with similar amounts of motivation. Building from this, she observed her own success, self-discipline, and motivation in life in comparison to David Levin, one of the founders of KIPP schools. They had both been successful, but she had not entered her postdoctoral work at Penn until she was thirty-two years old and had worked many jobs in different fields before resolving herself to her studies in social psychology, particularly on grit, while David Levin had resolved what he wanted to do with his life at the age of twenty-two, overcome obstacles, and took part in creating a successful network of charter schools. Paul Tough does wonderful job of putting it into words in his book How Children Succeed when he says “Duckworth felt that Levin, who was about her age, possessed some trait that she did not: a passionate commitment to a single mission and an unswerving dedication to achieve that missions. She decided to name this quality and she chose the word grit."
Angela Duckworth, along with Christopher Peterson, created a test called the Grit Scale to measure how much grit a person has. It is a test of self-assessment made up of twelve statements to which the test-taker rates themselves on a scale from "very much like me" to "not like me at all," which are then given numerical values to determine the grit score (you can find your own grit score here). Duckworth and Peterson conducted multiple studies on the correlation between grit and success. Their studies revealed that high grit scores correlated with being more likely to survive to later rounds in children at the National Spelling Bee, getting higher GPAs in students at the University of Pennsylvania, and was a more accurate predictor of which cadets persisted in Beast Barracks [a summer training course at West Point military academy] and which ones dropped out than the military's own complex evaluation called the whole candidate score.
Duckworth's initial studies at Penn were on on self-discipline, in which she found that self-assessed discipline tests were more indicative of the students in her study's final GPAs than their IQ scores. She followed up her work with self-control with studies on motivation. This was the foundational work in psychology from which she sensed that some third characteristic relating to self-control and motivation had to explain the consistent discrepancies that existed between people with similar levels of self-control with similar amounts of motivation. Building from this, she observed her own success, self-discipline, and motivation in life in comparison to David Levin, one of the founders of KIPP schools. They had both been successful, but she had not entered her postdoctoral work at Penn until she was thirty-two years old and had worked many jobs in different fields before resolving herself to her studies in social psychology, particularly on grit, while David Levin had resolved what he wanted to do with his life at the age of twenty-two, overcome obstacles, and took part in creating a successful network of charter schools. Paul Tough does wonderful job of putting it into words in his book How Children Succeed when he says “Duckworth felt that Levin, who was about her age, possessed some trait that she did not: a passionate commitment to a single mission and an unswerving dedication to achieve that missions. She decided to name this quality and she chose the word grit."
Angela Duckworth, along with Christopher Peterson, created a test called the Grit Scale to measure how much grit a person has. It is a test of self-assessment made up of twelve statements to which the test-taker rates themselves on a scale from "very much like me" to "not like me at all," which are then given numerical values to determine the grit score (you can find your own grit score here). Duckworth and Peterson conducted multiple studies on the correlation between grit and success. Their studies revealed that high grit scores correlated with being more likely to survive to later rounds in children at the National Spelling Bee, getting higher GPAs in students at the University of Pennsylvania, and was a more accurate predictor of which cadets persisted in Beast Barracks [a summer training course at West Point military academy] and which ones dropped out than the military's own complex evaluation called the whole candidate score.
The first video below is of Angela Lee Duckworth talking about grit, which she has labeled a key to success.
The second video below is of Paul Tough, an author and speaker, talking about Angela Duckworth and her concept of grit.
The second video below is of Paul Tough, an author and speaker, talking about Angela Duckworth and her concept of grit.
If you want to read further on grit, here are links to some relevant articles on grit:
Traits of the 'Get it Dine' Personality: Laser Focus, Resilience, and True Grit (an article by Katherine Mangan publish in The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Got Grit? The Secret Sauce to Success (an article from Forbes Magazine)
True Grit (an article by Angela Duckworth and Lauren Eskreis-Winkler)
Grit: It's What Separates the Best from the Merely Good (an article by E. Packard from the November 2007 Monitor on Psychology)
You can also click here to be directed to a page with audio of Angela Duckworth's speech at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
Traits of the 'Get it Dine' Personality: Laser Focus, Resilience, and True Grit (an article by Katherine Mangan publish in The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Got Grit? The Secret Sauce to Success (an article from Forbes Magazine)
True Grit (an article by Angela Duckworth and Lauren Eskreis-Winkler)
Grit: It's What Separates the Best from the Merely Good (an article by E. Packard from the November 2007 Monitor on Psychology)
You can also click here to be directed to a page with audio of Angela Duckworth's speech at the Chicago Humanities Festival.