Grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals

What happened

In 2007 Angela Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael Matthews and Dennis Kelly published a paper on grit in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A Crossref record for a review gives Duckworth's book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance as published by Scribner in 2016. In 2017 Marcus Credé, Michael Tynan and Peter Harms published a meta-analysis of the grit literature in the same journal.

The psychological idea

The authors defined grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals and proposed it as a trait that predicts success beyond intellectual talent. Their abstract says grit was not positively related to IQ but was highly correlated with the Big Five trait of conscientiousness, and that it still predicted success beyond both IQ and conscientiousness.

In practice

The 2007 paper reports educational attainment in two adult samples (1,545 and 690 people), grade point average in Ivy League undergraduates (138), retention in two classes of West Point cadets (1,218 and 1,308) and ranking in the National Spelling Bee (175). On average grit explained about 4 per cent of the variance in success outcomes. The abstract describes no training program.

Why it mattered

The meta-analysis authors suggest that grit research may have fallen victim to the jangle fallacy, treating overlapping constructs as different because they have different names. For introductory students the case shows how a popular label can be tested against an established trait. The 2016 book itself was not assessed.

Evidence behind the claims

• Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews and Kelly (2007) tested grit, defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, and report that on average it explained about 4 per cent of the variance in success outcomes.

  Experimental findingSource: [1]Where: AbstractChecked at abstract level

• The 2007 samples were two adult samples (N = 1,545 and 690), Ivy League undergraduates (138), two West Point cadet classes (1,218 and 1,308) and National Spelling Bee contestants (175).

  Experimental findingSource: [1]Where: AbstractChecked at abstract level

• The 2007 abstract reports that grit was not positively related to IQ, was highly correlated with Big Five conscientiousness, and still predicted success beyond both.

  Experimental findingSource: [1]Where: AbstractChecked at abstract level

• Credé, Tynan and Harms (2017) meta-analyzed 584 effect sizes from 88 independent samples covering 66,807 people, and report that grit's higher-order structure was not confirmed, that grit is only moderately correlated with performance and retention, and that it is very strongly correlated with conscientiousness.

  ContestedSource: [2]Where: Abstract

• In the meta-analysis the corrected correlation (rho) between overall grit and conscientiousness was .84 (22 studies, N = 18,826), .83 for the perseverance facet and .61 for the consistency facet, and overall grit correlated .18 with overall academic performance (39 studies, N = 13,141).

  ContestedSource: [2]Where: Results, section on relations with criteria and with state and trait variables; Tables 3 and 4

• In the meta-analysis's hierarchical regressions, overall grit explained no variance in overall academic performance or high school GPA after controlling for conscientiousness, while the perseverance facet explained a small amount of incremental variance; the authors say grit interventions may have only weak effects.

  ContestedSource: [2]Where: Results, Incremental Validity, Table 6; abstract

• Credé, Tynan and Harms say the size of the .84 correlation suggests grit may be redundant with conscientiousness and that grit research may have fallen victim to the jangle fallacy, with grit as currently measured a repackaging of conscientiousness or one of its facets.

  InterpretationSource: [2]Where: Discussion

• A Crossref record for a review gives Duckworth's Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance as published in New York by Scribner in 2016.

  DocumentedSource: [3]Where: Title of record 1Checked at page level

People involved

• Angela Duckworth. Lead author of the 2007 paper and author of the book Grit (2016)
• Christopher Peterson. Co-author of the 2007 paper
• Michael D. Matthews. Co-author of the 2007 paper
• Dennis R. Kelly. Co-author of the 2007 paper
• Marcus Credé. Lead author of the 2017 meta-analysis
• Michael C. Tynan. Co-author of the 2017 meta-analysis
• Peter D. Harms. Co-author of the 2017 meta-analysis

In the Psy101 course

• OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 11.7: Trait TheoristsChapter 11, Personality. Concept. Nearest related section; it does not discuss this topic by name.Nearest related section: it presents the Big Five, including conscientiousness and its link with academic success, but it does not mention grit.

This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.

Sources and inspection

3 of 3 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.

1. [1]
   Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goalsDuckworth, A; Peterson, C; Matthews, M; Kelly, D. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087-1101 (record via Europe PMC), 2007. Journal article. Primary source.Abstract or publisher record onlyRead the abstract as returned by the fetch tool from a Europe PMC record. Full text not read.
2. [2]
   Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literatureCredé, M; Tynan, M; Harms, P. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 492-511 (copy of the 2016 online-first version hosted at gwern.net), 2017. Journal article. Critique or replication.Relevant text checkedRead pages 1 to 12 of the PDF copy as images: abstract, introduction, method, results with Tables 3, 4 and 6, discussion and the start of the limitations. The copy is the 2016 online-first version, not checked against the 2017 print pages. Later pages were not read.
3. [3]
   Crossref search records for reviews of Grit: The Power of Passion and PerseveranceCrossref. Crossref, 2016. Reference work. Secondary account.Reference article readRead bibliographic records of three reviews of the book. The book and its publisher pages were not opened.

Access note: The 2016 book was not opened, so its own claims are not assessed. Duckworth's later replies to critics were not read.

Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.

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