In 2013, Angela Duckworth, PhD, became a TED Talk sensation for her theory of grit — a facet of conscientiousness defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals.
The University of Pennsylvania psychology professor and 2013 MacArthur Fellow published the first paper on the topic with colleagues in 2007. In it, they concluded that grit was a better predictor of success than IQ or conscientiousness in a variety of populations, including cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 92, No. 6, 2007).
In 2016, she wrote the book “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” and the theory caught on among the public, as audiences from elementary school teachers to army generals wanted to know how to make their charges more “gritty.”
Skeptics, however, were not as impressed with Duckworth’s theory of stick-to-itiveness, arguing that grit’s contribution to success has been overstated. Now, a new study exploring the trait in the context of other factors that influence success is finding further support for the power of grit: Duckworth and colleagues have found that grit is important — but it’s just one of the ingredients necessary for success (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesopens in new window, Vol. 116, No. 47, 2019).
For the new study, the researchers revisited West Point with two primary goals: to see if their earlier results could be replicated in a much larger sample of cadets and to take a broader view of the characteristics that predict success.
The longitudinal study followed more than 11,000 cadets from nine classes to see how cognitive ability, physical ability and grit affected the cadets’ success. The researchers measured success in several ways, including grades, graduation within four years and completion of the cadets’ initiation training, known as “Beast Barracks” — a rigorous six-week training course described in the academy’s handbook as “the most physically and emotionally demanding part of the four years at West Point.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers found that cognitive ability was a strong predictor of academic grades. But grit was more influential than cognitive or physical ability when it came to making it through Beast Barracks: Cadets a standard deviation higher in grit than their peers had 54% greater odds of making it through this initiation period without dropping out. When it came to graduating from West Point in four years, grit and physical ability were each better predictors of success than was cognitive ability.
For the past century, most research on achievement has focused on cognitive factors, the authors note. This work highlights the need for more research on the noncognitive attributes that allow people to reach their goals. “Cognitive ability isn’t enough to succeed in life,” Duckworth says.
“Noncognitive factors are definitely important,” agrees Frank Worrell, PhD, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who also studies high achievement. Yet this paper doesn’t convince him that grit is the magic ingredient, he says.
“There are a lot of noncognitive factors not included in this study that may be important to success, such as self-efficacy, self-regulation, hope and optimism. Those variables might better explain these results,” Worrell says. “The question is, is grit the most important one we should be paying attention to?”
Duckworth and her co-author of both papers Michael D. Matthews, PhD, a psychologist and professor of behavioral sciences at West Point, both believe that grit belongs on that list, but they don’t disagree that there’s more to learn about the various elements that might lead to achievement. “This study kind of whets the appetite for what other variables would improve our ability to predict human performance over the long term,” Matthews says.
Duckworth says she hopes this paper presents a more nuanced view of grit by shedding light on some of the various factors that contribute to achievement. “It’s hard to predict the future, and not just because our measures could be better. People’s lives have a certain amount of chance that’s hard to get a handle on when someone is young,” Duckworth says. “The story of success isn’t a simple one, and there isn’t one single characteristic that predicts success over all others.”
