Sunday, March 31, 2013

On Grit

Grit vs. Talent:
Grit and talent are either orthogonal or slightly negatively correlated. To the extent that talented people are, on average, less gritty, individuals who are both extremely talented and extremely gritty should be particularly rare. 

How grit could be intentionally cultivated?
One important behavioral mechanism is deliberate practice, defined as practice activities designed to improve specific aspects of performance. Consistent with the broader literature on deliberate practice and skill acquisition, practice activities rated by spellers as more pleasurable and less effortful were dramatically less predictive of spelling performance. Instead, it was the hardest, least pleasurable practice that really paid off — and the grittiest kids who were able to do more of it.

Grit & Growth Mindset:
At present, we are investigating the link between grit and growth mindset, which is conceptually related to optimistic explanatory style but more specifically refers to the implicit belief that intelligence is malleable rather than fixed. In as yet unpublished cross-sectional studies of school-age children, we have found moderate, positive associations between grit and growth mindset, suggesting that growth mindset, like optimistic explanatory style, may contribute to the tendency to sustain effort toward and commitment to goals.

Grit & Delayed Gratification:
To pursue very long-term goals, sustaining effort and interest even when progress is halting, would seem to require the capacity to delay gratification. Thus, one intriguing possibility is that grit later in life is augured by early individual differences in the ability to forgo immediate pleasure for the sake of greater, deferred benefit. It may also help to explain age-related increases in grit, since it is well-established that the capacity to delay gratification improves between childhood and adulthood.

- More Here

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