Grit Background

Predicting Success

Many organizations have a vested interest in predicting applicants who will succeed and those who will not. Failure to predict accurately can be costly. For example, the U.S. Army typically spends $15,000 to recruit each soldier. For each soldier that drops out, the U.S. Army must pay another $15,000. In the workplace, poor hiring decisions can be costly in terms of time and money when new hires are trained, only to have them leave shortly afterward. Student retention plays a significant role in universities’ financial health; even a small difference in retention can have a major impact on the bottom line.

Angela Duckworth’s interest in the predictors of success began with a study of cadets at West Point Military Academy. As a graduate student in psychology, she helped to identify the traits that would predict the cadets who would graduate and those who would drop out, a question that had puzzled experts for 50 years. West Point had previously calculated a “Whole Candidate Score” for each applicant, based on a weighted combination of standardized test scores, high school rank, leadership potential and physical fitness tests. As a predictor of success, the process failed.

Likewise, many organizations and institutions still privilege evidence of cognitive abilities as predictors of success. Colleges examine achievement records, such as grades, class rank, standardized test scores, and a list of extracurricular activities. The military privileges diplomas, degrees, and tests of mental health and physical fitness. Corporations seek out the “brightest and best,” as measured by an MBA and a grade-point average. However, Duckworth’s research shows that cognitive and physical ability alone prove an incomplete indicator of success. In response, Duckworth developed the Grit Scale, a survey tool designed to measure passion and perseverance, grit’s two key components. The Grit Scale has proven to be a reliable predictor of many aspects of success in a variety of contexts.

Resilience

The 20th century has seen a series of waves of psychological theories, beginning with the schools of behaviorism (which sees behavior as a response to stimuli) and Freudian psychology (which sees behavior as a response to unconscious mental processes) that dominated the early part of the century. Later movements included cognitive theory, which focuses on the importance of childhood in how people acquire and process knowledge. The relatively recent field of positive psychology promotes well-being through individual initiative. The term “positive psychology” was coined by American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908–70) in 1954. Maslow, best known for his hierarchy of human needs, theorized that basic physiological needs must be met before psychological needs. Self-actualization, or achieving one’s full potential, results when an individual is not deprived in the other areas. While all are needs, only self-actualization is considered a “growth need.”

Positive psychology holds that a person identifies and cultivates their mental assets rather than corrects problems. Practices include identifying strengths, engaging in positive self-talk, and cultivating behaviors that provide a purpose for living. Marty Seligman (1942–), often seen as “the father of positive psychology,” mentored Angela Duckworth in her early exploration of factors affecting resilience. Psychologists define this trait as the process of adaptation in response to adversity. Resilience is not an inborn trait that one either possesses or does not possess; instead, it can be nurtured.

Duckworth sees a growth mindset, a belief that people can change and grow, as critical to grit because improvement must be perceived as possible. Such a mindset is less likely to occur when lower-level needs are not met and suffering is viewed as beyond one’s control, as suggested by experiments Duckworth cites on “learned helplessness.”

What causes individuals to attain their goals has been widely explored but is not fully understood. Intention is not enough to cause people to achieve their goals, as evidenced by many broken New Year’s resolutions. Duckworth proposes that “gritty” people succeed in goal attainment because they passionately pursue an overarching goal while working toward flexible but coordinated lesser goals.