Is It Grit ?

Could grit be the primary reason why some people succeed when others fail?  In common parlance, “grit” has very positive connotations.  The dictionary extolls the virtues of grit as “courage and resolve; strength of character.”  Even psychologists heap mighty praise on the value of grit, as when Duckworth  et al. (2007) suggest that grit, which they defined as enduring passion for a long term goal plus perseverance toward it, probably is as important for everyday success as is intellectual ability.

Frankly, I am a big fan of grit as defined by Duckworth.  I like the concept because my personal experience, clinical practice, and reading of the professional literature provide substantive support for it.  On the other hand, because I always try to challenge my assumptions, especially my favorite assumptions, I remain alert for valid and reliable information to prevent me from generalizing too far from the empirical data.   That is why I carefully examined the work of Marcus Credé, Michael C. Tynan, and Peter D. Harms (2016) and present it to you today.

Concerned that grit had become an over-hyped construct, Marcus Credé and his colleagues reviewed the literature to determine the evidence for and against its utility.  They prefaced their approach by questioning whether the grit concept is separate from the older, more established notions of perseverance and conscientiousness.   According to them, standard measures of perseverance were sufficient for predicting success; adding measures of goal passion did not improve prediction significantly.  Similarly, the Credé group also concluded that the grit concept was so strongly correlated with conscientiousness that the two are virtually synonymous.  Part of their justification was that standard measures of conscientiousness include the capacity for self-control which obviously is critical for both conventional success and for grit.

Despite their apparent failure to substantiate grit as a special success-inducing entity, the team did acknowledge some benefits of the construct relevant to our discussion.  First, for cognitive or academic tasks, Credé et al. found that persons high in grit retained information better than their low-grit peers.  Second, also in the cognitive and academic realms, the investigators conceded that the effort aspect of grit did account for a measurable advantage over mere conscientiousness per se.

What then is my take and how does it relate to healthful lifestyle? 

I believe that after first minimizing the value of passion for a goal, Credé later revealed its worth.  Since research and commonsense indicate that retention is best for information about which we are passionate, it is reasonable to suspect that the passion dimension of grit accounted for the superior retention advantage of those high in grit.  Moreover, we all know that because conscientiousness is an intention rather than an action, goals will not be reached solely through conscientiousness.  Success also requires overt action—sustained effort—and sustained effort is an essential element to grit regardless of how it is defined.  If you can make grit a prominent feature of your identity, you naturally and relentlessly will exert intensive actions to reach your goals. 

To summarize, healthful lifestyle change is predicated on an individual’s remembering the why, what, when, how and where of his/her goals.  And change endures only through continued passionate adherence to the behaviors that comprise it.  So I still like the notion of grit as Duckworth’s enduring passion for a goal plus perseverance toward it.  What do you think?

References

Credé, M.,  Tynan, M. & Harms, P. (2016).  Much Ado About Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 16 , No Pagination Specified.doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000102.

 Duckworth, A., Peterson, C., Matthews, M., & Kelly, D. R. (2007).  Grit: Perseverance and passion for long term goals.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1087–1101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087.