
Is ‘grit’ overrated in explaining student success? - sonabinu
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/25/is-grit-overrated-in-explaining-student-success-harvard-researchers-have-a-new-theory-and-its-not-comforting-at-all/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_gp-grit-710a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
======
alexc05
I worked for 5 years as a high school teacher. In my observation, the
"smartest kid in class" could be left in the dust by a "dumb kid" who decided
to work hard.

I use quotes because it does raise the question of who is really the smart one
there.

In this case, I do mean that the smart kid was the one who immediately showed
an understanding of the material and could demonstrate proficiency sometimes
beyond the course material... but was too lazy to actually hand in his work.

The other kid needed massive amounts of extra attention, came in every day at
lunch to see if he could just put a bit more time in, handed in the work six
times with improvements each time... he crushed it.

If anything, `grit` would be underrated in measuring student success if we
pegged it at 100% of the variance.

That said, "student success" is only one measure and is, in a number of ways,
wildly artificial.

There was an adage to the effect of "you only learn what you pay attention
to", but in this case we might also say "you're only graded on what you do"

If student success is measured in grades, and you're only graded on what you
do, then doing work (aka: grit) is the only thing that matters.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
Your comment reads like a parody of public education.

If the smartest kid "failed" because he "didn't hand in his work"... this is a
plain and unambiguous confession that your job wasn't to educate, but to make
the poodles jump through hoops.

~~~
pjc50
It's an accurate model of the real world, which very much belongs to those who
show up and hand in the work.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
My current job has absolutely zero labor as part of my responsibilities. I do
not move things, I do not shape things, I do not package, weld, bolt, grow, or
manufacture.

What hard work?

They need me to think. Clearly, intensely, brilliantly at times.

Someone who 'shows up and does the work" will never be able to do what I do,
because "showing up and doing the work" is the antithesis of thinking clearly
and intensely. It's what unthinking people do.

Here on Hacker News, I suspect most are more like me, and less like those who
"show up and do the work". However, there are some vestigial counter-
productive work ethics from the early 20th century that haven't completely
withered. Or maybe it's just a metaphor that we can't let go of, one that
feels important even though whatever it once described is now gone.

~~~
no_flags
I interpreted the parent comment differently. To me, people who "show up" are
those who are present, engaged, and making an effort to succeed in good faith.
People who "hand in the work" are those who get stuff done, maybe not
perfectly but they give it their best shot. They try. I agree with the
original comment that these are crucial elements for success, and perhaps more
valuable than raw intelligence.

Thinking is an important part of the job for most people on HN, as you rightly
noted, but thoughts must lead to actions to produce any sort of value for an
employer. The action could be as "simple" as communicating a thought with
others (not always simple!).

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
My thoughts never lead to action.

I sit in an office chair all day. That's it. No actual work, no actions, ever
occur.

It's not even fair to claim me clicking on a mouse or klacking on a keyboard
are "actions"... at some point in the future they'll plug a jack into my skull
and even those minimal physical movements will be a thing of the past. We're
just not there yet.

The sum total of everything I do is thought. Not action.

------
bryanlarsen
That reminds me of the Stanford marshmallow experiment: give a kid a
marshmallow, and tell the kid that he can eat the marshmallow now, but if they
can wait 15 minutes, they'll get two marshmallows.

They found that there's an excellent correlation between the kids who wait and
future life success.

But it also turns out that there's also an excellent correlation between kids
who eat the marshmallow without waiting and kids who grow up in an environment
where adults don't keep promises...

~~~
kittyfoofoo
For what it's worth, In the Marshmallow Test book, the author mentions that
prior to the test, the experimenter spent 15 minutes interacting with the
child to build trust. They gave the child a bell, and the researcher would
explain that if the researcher left the room, the child could ding the bell to
bring the researcher back. They'd do a few iterations of this, with the
researcher promptly rushing back each time, in order to build trust.

Perhaps not a complete solution, but the problem was at least addressed.

~~~
LionessLover
It seems to me that a one-time positive experience with one person hardly
influences attitudes formed over a far longer period - and I don't even need
to take into account yet that for evolutionary reasons negative signals have a
much stronger influence than positive ones. So to me all this shows is that
they were aware of the problem - I don't see that this shows that they did
anything significant to address it.

------
tokenadult
The personality psychologists I know tell me that Martin E. P. Seligman, the
originator of the idea of "learned helplessness" and the author of helpful
books such as _The Optimistic Child_ , advised his student Angela Duckworth to
call "grit" by that term as a marketing move to make people pay more attention
to the idea. In the psychology literature, people have been writing for a long
time about the personality dimension "conscientiousness," and grit is very
little distinguishable from that. I'm a homeschooling parent of four children,
and it's plain as day to me (and consistent with all the statistics in the
research literature) that conscientiousness matters at the margins. Two
equally smart children (per IQ test), one conscientious, one less
conscientious, will differ in life outcomes. Everyone knows that.

The HUGE question that is well worth investigating is how much parenting or
good teaching or anything else can change a young learner's level of
conscientiousness. Conscientiousness changes over the course of life, so it
isn't completely fixed for anyone. It varies (somewhat) among identical twins,
so environmental influences do matter in development of a given degree of
conscientiousness. But so far we don't know a lot yet about what kind of
parenting or what kind of teaching might work best to develop
conscientiousness. That's well worth learning about. Calling it "grit" is
regrettable because that prompts people to neglect the prior research
literature.

AFTER EDIT: Comments below this comment asked for definitions of
"conscientiousness." I'll put a few links here.

[http://pages.uoregon.edu/sanjay/bigfive.html](http://pages.uoregon.edu/sanjay/bigfive.html)

[http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/011382000/BigFive.ht...](http://http-
server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/011382000/BigFive.html)

[http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/popkins.html](http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/popkins.html)

~~~
jonahx
If it truly is a synonym for grit in prior literature, "conscientiousness" is
the regrettable term. "Grit" is far more faithful to common usage.
"Conscientiousness" in everyday speech connotes "politeness" and "thinking
about others." These qualities have nothing to do with the thing Duckworth
(and other business writers) are calling "grit." They're referring to
perseverance, never giving up -- the ability to get up and keep going after
failing, and to doggedly pursue long-term goals. In popular culture (eg, the
film "True Grit") and everyday speech, "grit" conveys this concept perfectly,
better than any other word I can think of in English. So whether it was a
conscious marketing ploy or not, it's a far more accurate term.

~~~
hyperpape
I think conscientiousness also means taking care in getting things done. And
if you do not persevere, you might be quite nice and polite to people, but you
will continually let them down by giving up on things you should be doing. Try
the first four sentences of this paper for a literary/philosophical
presentation of the idea:
[http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010216?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010216?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents).

~~~
ghaff
I agree but I'd add that, for me, "grit" has a connotation of toughing it out
and completing a task however painful/unpleasant/difficult it is.
Conscientiousness is more about reliably doing things you've said you would do
on schedule. The two are related but one suggests doing what it takes to make
it through a really difficult stretch while the other is more akin to turning
in assignments promptly because you stuck to a schedule and didn't go out
partying the night before.

~~~
hyperpape
That's fair.

------
blfr
Yes. Every factor is overrated, except genetics which is greatly underrated.

Our culture demands that we do not accept "biological determinism" and so
everything else needs to be (rhetorically) stretched to cover for it. That's
how we get papers and thinkpieces on grit, stereotype threat, etc. These will
be found to have minimal impact if the findings are replicated at all and so
new factors will need to be invented.

Anecdotes from the OP aren't particularly damning but you can already see the
authors angling to be the ones who feed the next cycle.

~~~
emodendroket
I don't know why you're so confident this is settled. Clearly, at the extreme,
someone who receives no education at all is going to be extremely hobbled in a
modern society no matter how intelligent he is. At the other extreme, the best
education in the world won't turn someone suffering from severe intellectual
disability into a genius. But there is a large range between these and it is
not really so clear, to me, that the balance is tipped so heavily in favor of
genetics.

~~~
chongli
It's easier to see what's going on if you look at sports. Thousands of
basketball players have received the best training, nutrition, and coaching
that money can buy yet there is still a huge gap between top players like
Curry or James and the rest of the field. We can talk about grit,
perseverance, determination, etc. until we're blue in the face but all else
being equal, talent will be the deciding factor.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Here's the thing about pro sports. There are less than 500 people who play
professional basketball. The distribution of basketball playing skill is
logarithmic, so there might be 5,000 people with 90% of the skill of pro
players, 50,000 people with 80% of the skill, etc. As a result, even if the
total difference in skill resulting from talent is small, because the number
of people who play basketball is so large and the number of pro players is so
small, the pro ranks are going to be filled with only the most talented
people.

Does that mean just because you're not naturally talented that you can't
become a phenomenal basketball player? No, unless you're really
short/unathletic, with enough hard work and intelligence you can probably
achieve the 90% of pro skill level, which is still really freaking good.
Unfortunately, most people are more motivated by the desire to be pro than the
love of playing basketball, so when they are eclipsed by more talented people
(a good sign you aren't going to be able to go pro) they give up and do
something else.

The good news is that in most areas of life, all that matters is how good you
are, and there isn't some artificially cutoff goodness below which your skill
is pointless and wasted. For this reason the professional sports analogy is
usually unnecessarily demotivating.

~~~
cousin_it
(deleted)

~~~
emodendroket
Intelligence may be necessary for many career paths, but I doubt very much
that is sufficient for any of them.

------
moyix
Perhaps I misunderstood the article, but taking a collection of anecdotes (n =
36) about highly successful people who took a wide variety of paths to success
doesn't seem like a very good way to attack the concept of grit. For one
thing, extremely successful people are likely to be outliers in many ways, and
so it may not be wise to generalize their advice.

It's unfortunate, because I think grit does have real issues: it seems that a
large number of studies have found that it doesn't add anything over the
existing concept of conscientiousness:

[http://scottbarrykaufman.com/study-alert-much-ado-grit-
meta-...](http://scottbarrykaufman.com/study-alert-much-ado-grit-meta-
analytic-synthesis-grit-literature/)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/05/angela_duckworth_says_grit_is_the_key_to_success_in_work_and_life_is_this.html)

------
thebigspacefuck
"In each case, what we found is that they started down one path because they
thought that was what they were supposed to do, and then at some point they
realized that they didn’t like that path at all,” Rose said. “During that
period, they fell into something else and made a series of choices that led
them to success.”

This describes me exactly. I'm one of those people that never knew what they
wanted to do and spent a lot of time just thinking about it and being worried
about my future. After switching colleges once, majors 4 times, and seriously
considering dropping out more than a couple of times, I finally landed on
something that felt right enough I could force myself to get through when it
was hard, without it feeling pointless. I found true motivation. My internal
and external worlds aligned and I rocked it.

Unfortunately I think that feeling only lasted through getting my current job
and I'm now back to contemplating the pointlessness/morality of my work day in
and day out. The ultimate goal of my work is to replace people in a call
center, to automate their jobs so they don't have to be hired anymore. I don't
think I'll feel right about it until we figure out basic guaranteed incomes
and what people are supposed to do to live if they don't work and all the
Player Piano(Vonnegut) kind of stuff nobody talks about when they're just
thinking about making money.

If you're working on something that you're passionate about, that is truly
changing the world for the better, please let me know. I'd love to work on
something and have no doubts about what I'm doing with my life again.

~~~
LionessLover
Doubt is good! As an extreme example, remember how at the end of the war Nazis
committed suicide, and it happened on all levels, not just the very prominent
examples like Göbbels that everybody knows about? It wasn't because they were
afraid of being judged (there were plenty of them who managed to escape
justice), it often was because they were so convinced of their cause that when
it failed they saw no future, nit just for themselves - they actually thought
it was the end for the German people's future.

So please keep your doubt. The more I learn - and I've taken courses like
crazy over the last couple of years - the more I doubt. It#s just that now my
doubt is _more specific_.

So what you may want to do is replace "unspecific doubt" like the one
exhibited in conspiracy theories by much more specific doubt. Donn't try to
abandon doubt itself!

Also, life inherently only has exactly the meaning you decide it has, so
looking outside yourself is prone to failure. Also see
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4CvFWCULuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4CvFWCULuI)
:-) Seriously, as soon as you look for something on the outside to tell you
what you should do you limit yourself and start on a path to failure - because
now, instead of taking responsibility for your choices you will say "but I had
no choice!".

------
projectramo
I am waiting for the grand reveal where we learn that luck is the dominant
factor in success.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Lucky to be born in the United States? Sure! Lucky to not have gotten cancer?
Yup. Lucky to have not been hurt in a random automobile accident? I was such a
stupid driver in high school. Lucky to have not lost my mind as many males do
in their late teens/early 20s? Oh god yes.

Lucky to have the good friends that I have? Still yes. Had I simply sat on the
other side of the room of CS101 I'd have joined a different project team and
have had different friends in school and to this day.

Lucky to be a gainfully employed programmer on salary? I feel I could do that
10 out of 10 times. Or 9 out of 10 times if it helps the conversation. In
different realities I'd work at different companies. Specialized my talents
differently. Probably even live in a different city. Definitely have a
different partner. But I'd have a good job somewhere. In that I'm confident.

I've been "unlucky" in that no project I've ever worked on has ever blown up.
Never seen a fat bonus. I've still drive the same 1999 Volkswagen Jetta I got
in 2004. No fancy car for me. No lucky stock options that hit it big.

I'm arguably lucky to be a programmer. Born in a good year for it. But I don't
think I'm lucky to have a good job that pays well. If I were born a few years
earlier I'd simply have picked a different career. I could have been a lawyer.
Or a mechanical engineer. Even a doctor. I find a lot of things interesting.
For careers I'd have always picked something interesting that pays well. I
like teaching people quite a lot. But it doesn't pay well. So it was never a
consideration. If teachers averaged 6 figures it'd have been on my short list
as well.

------
fiatmoney
It's hilarious how the educational establishment tries to take well-known
concepts with a rich psychological and psychometric history behind them,
rebrand them, decide they're the Most Important Thing Ever for three years or
so, and then toss them for the next thing. They usually pretend along the way
that the same people haven't been in charge of the educational establishment
for 60 years or so, and that the present state of education is some sort of
test-driven Korean drill-and-kill dystopia, to which the latest fad is a
breath of fresh air.

"Conscientiousness" is the term of art. It's part of the Big 5 personality
model (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)
) which has its own various promoters and refuters. Inasmuch as the literature
is contradictory it's because it's not a model that works super well for
actually doing stuff, beyond marginal effects (more conscientious worker ==
better, all else equal) & tautologies (hard workers work hard and do better at
hard jobs that reward hard work).

------
epalmer
What a horrible article. The title talks about grit but then they commingled
the 10,000 hour mastery concept into the conversation.

> “Things like grit and 10,000 hours are mindsets that are very misleading
> because they are consequences not causes — they are lagging indicators of
> performance,” said Todd Rose, who is the author of The End of Average, a
> book that illustrates how averages are flawed in understanding human
> achievement.

If we take grit to be "fire-in-the-belly" I have observed as a parent,
mentor/coach of high school and adults and high performing team lead that it
has several characteristics that a parent, coach, mentor, manager and even
peer should be aware of.

I like the "fire" analogy. As a parent I can put water on my child's fire and
put it out. I can be over-bearing, abusive etc. As a manager there are many
things I can do to do the same like micro manage them.

As a parent I can help flame the fire (think adding fuel and oxygen). I can
give them earned respect, greater levels of responsibilities and coach them
with a growth mindset.

I have parented, managed and mentored with an intention to make the flame
lager since I first had a manager responsibility and discussed this concept
with Dr. Michael Stonebreaker in the early 1980s. So far it has seemed to work
for me.

Genetics and early environment seems to me to be very important to starting
life with a fire-in-the-belly. But what gets done with that by the individual
and those that have some control over their paths early on makes a big
difference.

But let us not forget that to be good at engineering, for example, one has to
be able to conceptualize and visualize in their minds-eye. Having grit does
not make up for that. Having both is a killer for success. My observations
only and yes they are not scientific.

------
dsfyu404ed
Of course 'grit' correlates with success in an environment where the payoff is
way beyond the horizon, things are hard and there's ample opportunities to
bail. Of course it matters much less if the payoff is visible, things are easy
and there's things in place to prevent/dissuade people from bailing out.

Seems obvious to me.

------
Joof
For education, it matters. There are no choices or pivots available to a
student; they have one path available to them in most cases.

For life, it may not matter. You have more options to find something where you
excel more easily or are more passionate about something.

------
brianwawok
Podcast on the topic and interview with the same author

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/grit/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/grit/)

I am not sure what I think. There is a definite correlation between grit and
success. The people that try to do something once and quit are the people I
know that are, 15 years after high school, working at the local pizza shack.
The people I know that could try and try and try to get something done, are
the pizza now doctors and programmers and lawyers.

But I also know that most of the people I see as gritty had the "better"
parents. So maybe it was indeed a trailing indicator.

------
djscram
As someone with ADHD, I have spent a lot of my life trying to have more grit.
In fact, I did make it through some difficult programs, the navy nuclear power
program and Georgetown Law, prior to being diagnosed. But I always came across
like I wasn't trying. I wanted desperately to try, but didn't understand that
my mind couldn't just add grit on demand. (though if I managed to get myself
in enough of a bind, the adrenaline did help). Somewhere along the line
(before being diagnosed), I came to see things like grit as a moral judgement
--one that I consistently failed.

------
emodendroket
"Grit" is the latest pop-psych trend that will eventually fade away.

------
throw7
If 'grit' replaces 'passionate' I'm all in. I was tired of hearing about
passionate people 10 years ago. Bout time for a change.

------
BuckRogers
No. Not even close. I consider myself of average intelligence, I knew a _lot_
of more intelligent people than me in my life. Some of them are even using
meth now. I succeed because I stick to things, follow through, take pride in
what I do and make sure I do as well as I can.

I was not an exceptional student, would have been but I worked 35 hours a week
while attending college 12-19 hours a week plus studying till the library
closed Sunday through Thursday.

I may not be a ninja developer or whatever but I'd honestly put money on
myself over some genius-flake. And if someone has grit + genius... well, watch
out because it would be amazing to see in action. Maybe that's Einstein in his
later years. I'm sure everyone with a high IQ believes that description fits
them, but in general geniuses don't have to try very hard so they never know
what 'grit' is. Or what it takes for the rest of us.

I do think grit is partially taught in ways that are completely non-related to
mental exercise. I grew up in the midwest in a house with no air conditioning
because my father thought it would make us soft to have it. Thankfully the old
man did buy us a Commodore. Yes, it gets hot in the midwest- just as hot as
anywhere else in the summer. I was even raised in cloth diapers and I'm under
35... to give an idea of how old school. They also made sure I always worked,
been working without lapse since I was 12 years old. I've worked on a hog farm
in the July heat from 4AM-noon. While I was born in 82, I don't feel like a
'Millennial' at all. I feel like a very gritty person mentally and physically
that is rare anymore but has paid off in ways. But definitely feel more in
common with my brother's generation (born in '78, GenX) or maybe even older,
less pampered gen.

From my perspective, American society is severely missing grit. People are
going to have to toughen up because this softie society won't last forever.
But I don't think people know the difference between false posturing tough guy
aggression based on insecurity is and what real grit means. Too much tough guy
gangster rap for the lower class and too many get-rich-quit-or-I-give-up
flakes in the more fortunate classes.

I've heard multiple people in my lifetime tell me they "won't go to work for
less than $15 an hour" or won't get out of bed for less than that. I've
suffered years through horrible jobs to build a resume. Just to appear
reliable, which I am.

Most people don't know what it takes to get ahead for those without lots of
money and without a naturally high IQ. Sometimes it sucks but lays the
groundwork for later on. It's about character.

------
projectramo
"overrated" implies an estimate of rating that diverges from the actual
baseline. For this, we have to know how people rate grit in importance.

There is pendulum where for a few years people will have "under estimated"
intelligence, or patience, or genetics, or friends, or parents. These articles
come out, and suddenly everyone "overrates" those factors to the detriment of
others. Then the article moves on to the underrated factor.

Unless people are actually ascribing various quantities to these factors, I
don't know how "under" or "over" the estimates are from the actual influence
of the factors.

------
RubyRuby
Regardless of whether you believe in measuring success by "grit", the simple
quiz referenced in the article is definitely intriguing.

Another point raised in this article is the idea of being able to focus on one
task/goal until it's completed. Learning to multitask definitely detracts from
one's ability to focus on single tasks/goals and make true progress. However,
in my college and high school experiences, the structures didn't stress these
common sense principles for learning enough.

------
martimoose
A test that assesses the future success of West Point candidates might not be
valid in assessing the future success of, say, a programmer or a lawyer. It
does not necessarily takes the same thing to succeed in the military than to
succeed in other spheres. I know of a lot of people who don't have that
"grit", and would therefore probably fail at West Point, but they did not in
that particular thing that they're doing.

------
useful
Isn't this just type 2 (slow) thinking? The "grit" required to focus on
complex tasks is the same brain function as ability to suffer for long periods
during exercise, problem solving, etc. Many books and science cover this
subject, I can think of two, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and "Iron War".

------
ColinDabritz
Alfie Kohn has some good commentary on the topic of 'grit' as an educational
philosophy: [http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/downside-
grit/](http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/downside-grit/)

It's not just overrated, it can be actively harmful.

He goes further on this and other topics in the book "The Myth of the Spoiled
Child"

------
thomasmarriott
No.

------
rubenolivares
Is it really that hard to understand success? Right person at the right place
at the right time. Seriously, it's a very old idea.

~~~
scottious
Not sure if you're trolling or being facetious or whatever... but I'll bite...
that's a gross over-simplification, don't you think?

I think the whole point is to get a better idea of what it means to be "the
right person". What kind of traits can we develop to make ourselves more
likely to be "the right person"? Nobody is sitting on the couch all day
crossing their fingers hoping that they're the right person to create a tech
startup, for example.

