Grit

Grit is a personality trait defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Grit entails committing to challenging projects and working diligently toward their achievement over extremely long stretches of time. Grit predicts objectively measured achievement outcomes, including performance in the National Spelling Bee, retention at West Point military academy, and graduation from the Chicago Public Schools. Consistent with speculation by early twentieth-century psychologists that effort and talent are independent, grit demonstrates incremental predictive validity for achievement outcomes above and beyond measures of talent (e.g., general intelligence, physical aptitude), to which grit is not positively related.