Grit
Watch the Video first and then read about grit, including - if you like - taking the grit scale.
The following excerpt is from Angela Duckworth’s website on grit: https://angeladuckworth.com/
To find out more about this fascinating topic, please read further on her website.
What is grit?
Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals.
One way to think about grit is to consider what grit isn’t.
Grit isn’t talent. Grit isn’t luck. Grit isn’t how intensely, for the moment, you want something.
Instead, grit is about having what some researchers call an”ultimate concern”–a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even when you fall down. Even when you screw up. Even when progress toward that goal is halting or slow.
Talent and luck matter to success. But talent and luck are no guarantee of grit. And in the very long run, I think grit may matter as least as much, if not more.
What can I use the Grit Scale for?
I created the Grit Scale so that I could study grit as a scientist. Why? Because you cannot study what you cannot measure.
I also think this questionnaire is useful as a prompt for self-reflection. For example, some of the most effective coaches and teachers I know give this questionnaire to their players and students in order to prompt a conversation about their evolving passion and perseverance.
However, I hasten to point out that all psychological measures, including the Grit Scale, have limitations. You can fake a higher grit score without much effort, for example. Another very serious but not-so-obvious limitation of questionnaires is called “reference bias.” This distortion of scores comes from people holding different standards by which they judge behavior. So, your score not only reflects how gritty you are but also the standards to which you hold yourself. I talk about this limitation, among others, in this article on measurement which I co-authored with my friend and colleague David Yeager.
In sum, I think the Grit Scale can be used for research and for self-reflection, but its limitations make it inappropriate for many other uses, including selecting employees, admitting students to college, gauging the performance of teachers, or comparing schools or countries to each other.