The Weak Case for Grit

May 6, 2021 8:26 AM

The Weak Case for Grit: Where’s the evidence that grit predicts success? (Nautilus) - "As it turns out, there was never much in the literature to support either of the two ideas that launched grit on its way: that it was more useful than conscientiousness and that it seriously outperformed “traditional” measures of cognitive or, in the context of military training, physical performance. It is difficult to justify Duckworth’s statement that grit “beats the pants” off older, more established measures. Many of the examples she gives consisted of studies in which the predictive usefulness of grit wasn’t compared with its most obvious competitor, conscientiousness, in which grit simply didn’t perform as well as traditional measures, or both." Related: Study challenges validity of the psychological "Grit Scale" (Phys Org)

Grit previously: We're looking for someone with character; great teaching takes true grit

posted by not_the_water (63 comments total)

12-year-old boy graduates from high school, college, starts 2 companies
posted by robbyrobs at 8:35 AM on May 6, 2021

Huh. I guess I'd not do well on "grit" because my "persistence of interest" is pretty low -- I'm "novelty seeking" instead. But I am perseverent/stubborn as fuck when I have a goal that I'm interested in. Pretty sure this is a marker of ADHD.

So I guess if an employer is looking for grit, they're looking for people who don't get bored with doing the same shit over and over again, but do get stubborn when confronted with an obstacle to getting that shit done.

Yeah, definitely a pro-capitalist assessment criteria.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:39 AM on May 6, 2021 [21 favorites]

Bold talk for a one eyed fat man.
posted by JohnR at 8:46 AM on May 6, 2021 [19 favorites]

It's probably hard to market books saying that the biggest predictor of success is sheer luck, but I know too many rich, flighty, lazy people and too many poor, hard-working, focused people to think that isn't the case.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:48 AM on May 6, 2021 [50 favorites]

Pretty sure grit in that case, sean, doesn't actually help them solve the problem in a novel way. I'm like you and my ability to bend around problems to either drastically shorten or improvise a new solution has made my work life much easier.

I've seen people pound away editing 3,000 individual items in a sales system while I spent an hour learning how to mass edit and tag. They'd already edited 3,000 of them but there were another 10,000+ that were heading my way to do. No. No, that is not what I am about.

Grit can take a hike. I'm a Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World boy. He also goes over grit and the dubiousness of it. One very interesting part is that people do not know what they like or want until they do it. The fact that you stubbornly stick with military service even if it is in no way what interests, motivates or that you're good at it... isn't necessarily a virtue. You could go do something you're more suited for!
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:49 AM on May 6, 2021 [10 favorites]

The first linked article talks a lot about how grit may simply be another word for consciousness, a concept that psychologists already study quite a bit (it's one of the "Big Five" personality traits). One thing I've come to peace with as I've gotten older (and hopefully wiser!) is that it's okay to some degree if using a different word to describe something gets (other/more) people interested in that concept in ways that are helpful and positive. If there are elements of deception or profiteering then of course that's unethical and unacceptable but the basic idea of relabeling or taking a slightly different approach to something that's helpful isn't necessarily a bad thing.
posted by ElKevbo at 8:55 AM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Wait, can I finally eat this marshmellow?
posted by gwint at 8:58 AM on May 6, 2021 [73 favorites]

I work in education and what I'll call gritlore, or perhaps gritgrift, is everywhere. I've seen it in textbooks, I've heard it in lectures, I've seen it at conferences, I've read about it in papers. It's particularly gross when I see it in marketing materials for edtech software/solutions/whatever - as if using a certain app will help "build grit" or "develop learners' grit". Ugh.

Now I just call it out as nonsense when I hear it. I was at a mental-health thing a few weeks ago and when "grit" and "resilience" came up as a suggestion for dealing with stress, I spoke up and said that "grit" wasn't going to make my hours shorter, my commute safer, my water and air cleaner, the distance from my family composed of fewer miles, or the number of people in my city who refuse to get vaccinated lower.

You shouldn't have to use grit just to get through the day and a normal job; you shouldn't have to show any significant amount of grit, sacrificing rest and health and peace, to power past problems caused at an institutional level. Creativity? Sure. Ingenuity? Teamwork? Go for it. Conscientiousness? Of course.

But it is not, and should never have been, the job of individuals alone operating in any system - a workplace, a school, a government - to grittily overcome a stream of traumatic, harmful events caused by huge systems beyond any one person's willpower to endure.

The problem isn't that I lack grit - the problem is capitalism. We are fine as we are. That Nautilus link in the original post ends with this: "It could be that the grit hype caught on because of its seductive promise to spare us a great deal of trouble. A serious effort to make life less unfair for neglected kids would likely require enacting bigger, more ambitious redistributive social programs—social programs that are very unlikely to be enacted given the state of 21st-century American politics. Grit, by contrast, is a quick fix."

And on grit's equally irritating cousin, resilience:

"In a neo-liberal capitalistic society that pits us against each other, severs meaningful connection, and frames oppression as a thing of the past or a rare event, it’s easier to situate resilience—much like pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps success—as the result an individual choosing to buck up instead of recognizing it as a complex and communal dynamic." - Resilience is a scam - Adèle Barclay - League of Canadian Poets

"Even though the resilient superhero is usually perceived as better, there is a hidden dark side to it: it comes with the exact same traits that inhibit self-awareness and, in turn, the ability to maintain a realistic self-concept, which is pivotal for developing one’s career potential and leadership talent. For instance, multiple studies suggest that bold leaders are unaware of their limitations and overestimate their leadership capabilities and current performance, which leads to not being able to adjust one’s interpersonal approach to fit the context. They are, in effect, rigidly and delusionally resilient and closed off to information that could be imperative in fixing — or at least improving — behavioral weaknesses. In short, when resilience is driven by self-enhancement, success comes at a high price: denial." - The Dark Side of Resilience - Harvard Business Review

posted by mdonley at 9:05 AM on May 6, 2021 [82 favorites]

I think it's another media driven concept that's nonsense. We're not learning in a military environment. People deserve an acceptable learning environment, not the atmosphere of a reality tv show series where they may have no safety net.

It's one of the most annoying and dangerous concepts to date. Especially if a person's actually lived in a truly gritty city. You realize how much 'grit,' can mess up families or completely sidetrack lives.

Grit admirers are usually people from middle class or upper class families who have a theatrical perspective of some culture within the world.

I think many people who truly understand a gritty disposition or pathway know it may greatly help them to work away from it as soon as possible. Grit as a novelty is a slightly ridiculous concept.
posted by firstdaffodils at 9:07 AM on May 6, 2021 [9 favorites]

Grit is a relative of that ultra-evil British cultural meme of "put up with all of the bullshit or we'll ostracize you" summed up as stiff upper lip.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:09 AM on May 6, 2021 [9 favorites]

Mdonley said everything I was thinking in a much more eloquent way. We simply need to stop trying to torture each other into hard plastic molds. It doesn't work.
posted by bleep at 9:11 AM on May 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

So I guess if an employer is looking for grit, they're looking for people who don't get bored with doing the same shit over and over again,

Not coincidentally it's also a philosophy that justifies abusive and coercive management practices as useful weeding-out tools rather than, y'know, abuse.
posted by mhoye at 9:11 AM on May 6, 2021 [14 favorites]

I’ll turn into grit after I’m dead, thanks.
posted by aubilenon at 9:12 AM on May 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

"In a neo-liberal capitalistic society that pits us against each other, severs meaningful connection, and frames oppression as a thing of the past or a rare event, it’s easier to situate resilience—much like pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps success—as the result an individual choosing to buck up instead of recognizing it as a complex and communal dynamic." I appreciate this, I don't really want to knock the concept of resilience (I think with the article aside, why consider such an important life trait or skill annoying?), but grit surfaces a lot of dramatic meaning or unnecessary theatric.
posted by firstdaffodils at 9:13 AM on May 6, 2021

Also this bit from the article: "But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily"
This is true but "perseverance" isn't the other factor, it's whether or not other people accept you easily. My own personal grit isn't worth 2 cents if no one will give me a chance to use it. I wish someone had helped me with that in a gentle & effective way instead of all the other useless garbage they wasted my time with.
posted by bleep at 9:17 AM on May 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Grit has just taught me to stick with menial, repetitive tasks instead of, as OnTheLastCastle says, getting creative and bending around the problem. Just accepting a task as is and bearing down on it is a poor choice long term choice as you eventually burn out. Insteqad, the people I've seen that didn't rely on raw intelligence for success were often also quite good at using their social skills (not to mention privilege!) to modify/avoid/offload tasks instead of accepting they had to do them.
posted by Hutch at 9:32 AM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Well, you can show anything with studies. You have to check your gut.
posted by thelonius at 9:34 AM on May 6, 2021

Anything to frame success and failure as a reflection of individual moral character and not material circumstance.
posted by Reyturner at 9:37 AM on May 6, 2021 [8 favorites]

"Instead, the people I've seen that didn't rely on raw intelligence for success were often also quite good at using their social skills (not to mention privilege!) to modify/avoid/offload tasks instead of accepting they had to do them." This is most situations. It isn't even negative, just needs recognition.
posted by firstdaffodils at 9:40 AM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's probably hard to market books saying that the biggest predictor of success is sheer luck

It's hard to quantify it as "biggest," but from 2016: "Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy: ...a compelling book that explains why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in their success, why that hurts everyone, and what we can do about it."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:48 AM on May 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

Luck is also greatly increased by access to power and the freedom to fail. Every company I've ever worked at includes a fairy tail of the company's founding that usually goes "the founders tried to start several companies that went nowhere and then a chance meeting with a CEO/VC/Powerful Person resulted in a great idea and here we are today".
posted by Reyturner at 9:52 AM on May 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of America's "longest running publications" is called Grit which claims to promote rural American know-how. It's also probably not a coincidence that I've never actually seen an actual copy, making it just as illusory as the values it espouses.
posted by jeremias at 10:02 AM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

There are times when grit/resilience/whatever does help.

For most of the time I've been on this site, I was dealing with one long-ass shit-ton stretch of rotten-ass luck; I could have legitimately been used as an anecdotal proof of the adage about breaking a mirror causing 7 years of bad luck. I have mentioned a few times in other threads about how at a couple points just following it, I'd taken one of those stress-evaluation tests where you go through a list of stress-inducing events and check off whether any of them had happened to you in the prior year, and then you add up the score associated with each and that was your "stress score" - and each time, I got a score so high that the test suggested I should have collapsed from exhaustion about three weeks prior. And yet I hadn't. Throughout that period I also had friends remarking that I was coping with the shit luck admirably well - they'd have curled up in a ball long before, but I was still hanging in, figuring things out, making things work. My parents have also actually told me "we've realized we can actually stop worrying about you" because they have seen a lot of wacky curve balls get thrown at me, and I somehow figure out a way out of it.

And that I would say is because of grit. For a long time when anyone remarked at how strong I was and how resilient I was for putting up with that, I was puzzled because I sincerely didn't get that I had a choice in the matter. I had shit to deal with; I really wished I didn't have it to deal with, but there it was, so let's get on with dealing with it. The thought of not dealing with it, and instead letting it overwhelm me and send me into an even worse place, simply didn't occur to me as being a thing I could do. So I dealt with it. I got through it, I'm in a much better place, and I'm moving on bolstered with the knowledge of just how resilient I am, so I know I don't need to lose sleep over the future because I've handled a whole hell of a lot of shit before and I know I can do it again.

That said, though - I think that is different from the kind of "grit" being presented here, or that at least it is being applied differently. Grit couldn't compensate for a lack of talent when I wanted to be an actress. Grit couldn't compensate for the lack of knowledge that kept me from knowing things about personal finance that could have helped me a FUCK-TON before this. Grit can't compensate for the specific class and social factors that pushed me into those situations in the first place.

Grit can get people out of a hole. But a map to guide people around the holes is even better, as well as a much better search-and-rescue for the people who don't have enough grit so they're not stuck there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:04 AM on May 6, 2021 [14 favorites]

"Grit can get people out of a hole. But a map to guide people around the holes is even better, as well as a much better search-and-rescue for the people who don't have enough grit so they're not stuck there."

This map is what people need instead of grit.
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:09 AM on May 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

Additionally, I appreciate the article, but it's also beginning to sound like a buzzword. Without coining another phrase like 'hipster,' or catchall terminology, what does this definition really qualify? Borderline pretentious determination?

Wiki, btw:
In psychology, grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective).
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:14 AM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Every "grit" presentation at work could be seamlessly replaced with your bosses asking, "HAVE YOU TRIED WORKING LIKE A FUCKING MULE? We hear that gets results!"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:15 AM on May 6, 2021 [26 favorites]

I had assumed grit was conscientiousness reframed to appeal to modern misogyny. (Not sure that wasn’t part of it, still.)
posted by clew at 10:23 AM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Grit? Grit? What are we, 1950s gym teachers?

Yes, let's not talk about our problems, and not seek out practical, meaningful solutions to them. Instead, let's suppress our pain, use substance abuse as a coping measure, lash out explosively at random times, and maybe invade a SE Asian country or two.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:27 AM on May 6, 2021 [13 favorites]

That was an interesting article; as someone who does think of herself as possessing "grit" and "resilience", those descriptors are helpful to ME to reframe past hardships and traumas, and celebrate that I've overcome them (with help! lots and lots of help!), but I don't think anyone outside my own brain and body would ever be able to quantify how much "grit" I have, and any attempts to do so would be random at best and victim-blamey at worst.

For example, I have anxiety about driving, so literally driving to the grocery store takes "grit" from me. Whereas someone else might not be demonstrating grit by doing that. Or say I had an abusive parent; just functioning "normally" demonstrates grit, but maybe someone else would point to someone functioning "exceptionally" and say they had more grit than I do.

Similar to Spoon Theory, my experience is that I might have 10 Grit Points a day and after I use them up I'm curled up in a fetal position. But we all have had different lives, backgrounds, circumstances... maybe one person's average day only requires the use of 5 Grit Points but another person has to use all 10 just to get out of bed. It's great to value perseverance through tough times, but if someone *can't* persevere, attributing it to "lack of grit" just seems cruel.
posted by rogerroger at 10:32 AM on May 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

Also, so as to not abuse the edit window, it's interesting that "grit" is such an individualized trait. Why focus on building one person's grit, rather than building a group's ability to help one another over obstacles?
posted by rogerroger at 10:33 AM on May 6, 2021 [12 favorites]

> But a map to guide people around the holes is even better, as well as a much better search-and-rescue for the people who don't have enough grit so they're not stuck there.

This map is what people need instead of grit.

Yes, this was precisely my point; apologies that wasn't clear.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:34 AM on May 6, 2021

Like the small plate literature, the idea of grit is so perfectly aligned with my own assumptions and heuristics that it's disappointing to learn that it's not well supported.

(Is there a word for being willing to reconsider your pop-science-inspired assumptions when it comes to evaluating people? Following the steampunk gear metaphor that I assume grit comes from. . . slop? Backlash? The later has other, ugly canotations. But, I'm working hard to improve my slop, as a personality trait.)
posted by eotvos at 10:37 AM on May 6, 2021

The best way to experience grit is to lean into the grinding wheel.
posted by Sockdown at 10:43 AM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

No grit, no pearl

[CW: Dave Trott + advertmarketingfaffoozle]
posted by chavenet at 10:54 AM on May 6, 2021

A-also, it was what Huck Finn liked best about Mary Jane:

You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain’t no flattery. And when it comes to beauty – and goodness too – she lays over them all.
posted by chavenet at 10:56 AM on May 6, 2021

But it is not, and should never have been, the job of individuals alone operating in any system - a workplace, a school, a government - to grittily overcome a stream of traumatic, harmful events caused by huge systems beyond any one person's willpower to endure.

I think this is the real thing. Like: look, if you exist in a situation rough enough that you have to learn to bust your ass to survive, yes, the instant you pull yourself out of mere survival you’ll start doing amazing because you have been working so hard for so long that there’s nothing else to do with it but put it in the extras. But that doesn’t mean it’s advisable to traumatize children just to make them more successful in future.
posted by corb at 11:02 AM on May 6, 2021 [10 favorites]

the idea of grit is so perfectly aligned with my own assumptions and heuristics that it's disappointing to learn that it's not well supported

These are the ideas you should be the absolute most suspicious of.

"Grit" as defined is really a maladaptive coping mechanism. It assumes that the parameters of the situation can't be changed and you have no choice but to endure. This is genuinely true for many people at different stages of their lives. And if the choice is between endurance and basically lying down to die, it's (usually) better to choose the former. But if your head is down to survive, you're not looking for the ways out. I look back now at some of the things I toughed out because I didn't understand that I could try to find alternatives, and I shake my head.
posted by praemunire at 11:10 AM on May 6, 2021 [17 favorites]

The phrase I'm looking for and not seeing in this thread is "replication crisis". There's a shocking fraction of peer-reviewed studies in all fields that fail to see their effects replicated when the experiment is run by other scientists. It's hard to assess whether psychology is more or less prone to it, but there seems to be acknowledgement that it is a big problem in the field. E.g., Psychology Today's series of articles on the Replication Crisis.
posted by wnissen at 11:14 AM on May 6, 2021 [9 favorites]

As a kid, I always thought Grit was a bit of scam.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:23 AM on May 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

It's hard to assess whether psychology is more or less prone to it

Psychology is one of the best known fields for its problems with replication.

I have great sympathy: human minds are super complex systems to study and just getting enough data can be a huge problem. I wish we could have lab-humans and run them through mazes or tests and then cut them up and study their brains, but apparently that's "unethical" and "torture". Instead, we have to beg them to take surveys and we can't get enough numbers, and it's so hard...

tl;dr: Social science is hard.
posted by jb at 11:24 AM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

These are the ideas you should be the absolute most suspicious of. . . "Grit" as defined is really a maladaptive coping mechanism.

I don't disagree with the first part. But, I am tempted to argue that there is something to the idea. As someone who works with students, there are some who will spend days trying to solve hard problems on their own and then offer thoughtful questions and lots of creative ideas when they get stuck. There are others who give up immediately and ask for help the moment they run into a roadblock. (Or just sit around doing nothing instead of asking for help, which is worse.) The later don't usually succeed. The former do, even if their technical skills are unexceptional. I don't know if that's grit. I doubt it's innate. But, it's something that sure seems real. There is a real value in trying to do hard things, if you want to become better at doing hard things.

In a lot of cases the parameters of the situation can be changed. But, sometimes the problem you're trying to solve is genuinely hard for reasons that don't involve bad actors or people at all. Some problems are just hard. Giving up and doing something you enjoy more is a reasonable response. But, solving hard problems can also be fun.
posted by eotvos at 11:30 AM on May 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

Free will ? I think when you invoke the word grit, you make the assumption you have free will to impose your powers of critical thinking, energy, and skills to do what you wish to to.
After this winter I am unsure about that assumption. My son and I have grit up the ass ,yet the problems we encountered this winter and before were way beyond us. Luck? God? Weed? The coyote gods? No.
I doubt that I have free will. Fuck grit.
posted by JohnR at 12:17 PM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

The fucking Calvinists always fucking ruin everything.
posted by mikelieman at 12:19 PM on May 6, 2021 [12 favorites]

There is a real value in trying to do hard things, if you want to become better at doing hard things.

The greater value lies in first getting a reasonably accurate idea of (a) whether the hard thing is worth doing in the first place and (b) whether the hard thing has to be so darn hard.

Having come up sort of tech-nerd-adjacent in the late 80s/90s, I used to assume that if I was having problems with a system, it was a problem of my not understanding something that did work, if perhaps in a convoluted or unexpected way. I put a lot of effort into solving those problems. These days, if I'm having a problem, I've realized it's usually because the product is a cheap piece of MVP crap, and trying fifty different approaches and painstakingly detailing them to support if I get really stuck is a total waste of my time (especially because "support" these days is usually just some doofus with a script to read at me). I maybe give up too early one out of every five times, but I sure save a LOT of time on the other four.
posted by praemunire at 12:26 PM on May 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

There is a real value in trying to do hard things, if you want to become better at doing hard things.

And recognizing when tenacity becomes obstinance is the essence of wisdom.
posted by nickmark at 12:48 PM on May 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

In We Want to Do More Than Survive, Bettina Love writes about the experiences and dreams of young students of color. On grit (and, indeed, directly responding to Duckworth's book):

"[Duckworth's conclusion] does not reflect and is out of touch with the real world and what it means to be dark, poor, and surviving. There are millions of people who work fifty to seventy hours a week, some at two or three jobs, but they cannot afford to pay their bills because the minimum wage does not cover the rising cost of living in the US. They keep getting up again and again, working, but they remain in poverty. This ceaseless cycle is no fault of theirs; the working poor are among the grittiest. They persevere for the long-term goal of their children's education. They hope that life can and will be better for the next generation. That is the grit of dark people. They work endlessly for the next generation and the next day with resolve, purpose, hope, faith, and a desire for their children to thrive one day off the labor of their grit. For dark people, being gritty means being solution-oriented, it means finding a way out of no way because you understand what is needed to solve the issues you are facing but lack the power and resources..." (p. 78).

So great for that kid robbyrobs linked to, but he didn't have grit - he just had the power and resources to solve whatever issues were thrown his way. Or just didn't have any issues thrown his way to begin with.
posted by papayaninja at 1:27 PM on May 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

Like Henry David Thoreaus grit?
Mom, please make another sandwich, this autonomous wilderness writing is getting really long.

I will say, the aesthetic of grit is so so nice. Particularly urban grit. I'll accept that grit any time.



It's similar to the perspective of interjecting suffering in someone else's life. This is never necessary. Life is going to do so naturally. There is rarely an excuse to be unkind to someone. Another event will do it for you within the day. Intentionally inflicting suffering seems to come from such a deep place of misdirection or willfull ignorance.
posted by firstdaffodils at 1:37 PM on May 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I use all my grit to be abrasive
posted by srboisvert at 1:53 PM on May 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

Why focus on building one person's grit, rather than building a group's ability to help one another over obstacles?

Because that's communism.
posted by Reyturner at 2:43 PM on May 6, 2021 [9 favorites]

Whoa, you mean these self-help books are mostly just garbage? Color me shocked.
posted by Pararrayos at 3:16 PM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Apparently the best determiner of whether somebody is likely to buy a self-help book is "has this person bought a self-help book before?"

Maybe that should be interpreted as "the first one worked so well, they bought more!" Or maybe it's "that one didn't work, let me try another… and another… and another."

Color me cynical in this regard.
posted by Lexica at 4:54 PM on May 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

Thoreau seems a strawman.
posted by Wood at 5:25 PM on May 6, 2021

The idea that if someone is unsuccessful it's because they didn't work hard enough, and everyone needs to just try harder, is abhorrent. But there is definitely value in learning to stick with something, and building up a tolerance for working hard at something.

Mastering a musical instrument takes countless hours of practice. Completing a marathon takes lots of training in advance, and lots of mental fortitude during the event (I assume, not planning to run that far myself). There are a great many things worth doing that require "stick-to-it-iveness" and not every process of learning and growing can be free of tough spots. I think a big factor is whether the thing you're persevering at (or failing to persevere at) is in service of your own goal or an externally imposed goal (the latter is too often the case in school or at work).

I haven't read Duckworth, but Mrs. Judgement Day and I have told our children they need to have at least one activity that challenges them to work hard. They get to pick what it is, and they've changed their interests as they've grown and we've never forced them to stick with anything they don't want to do, but we feel it's an important lesson that you don't give up on something just because you find it hard. I'm not sure if that's grit or something else we're trying to instill. We also neglected to leave one child out as a control, so I have no idea whether our parenting in this way has made any difference or the kids would have turned out similar if left to their own devices.
posted by judgement day at 5:38 PM on May 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Wait, this is a Jesse Singal article.

I don't trust Jesse Singal to have done the research.
posted by Merus at 6:06 PM on May 6, 2021 [8 favorites]

'Grit' is what we call the stuff that comes out of the blasters, formerly known as sandblasters. We don't use sand anymore, now it's actually little grains of metal. It's easier to clean up and doesn't make as big of a dust cloud in the environment.

Anyway, this character trait of 'grit' has always seemed to me like all the other buzzwords of the month. Easy to agree with in concept, but very difficult to describe how to do it in practice. Like, pick a situation, your employee asks you what would be the 'grit' choice of action. 9 times out of 10 either you can't answer that or that choice would be the stupid thing to do, given the team of experts we have around here to collaborate with for a better solution. We call that "beating your head against a wall" and "unwilling to ask for help" and "poor teamwork" and "not learning and adapting to lessons learned from experience" in performance evaluations.
posted by ctmf at 6:19 PM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Like maybe "don't give up on your goal easily?" But do change how you're trying to accomplish it if what you're doing isn't working.
posted by ctmf at 6:22 PM on May 6, 2021

Luck is also greatly increased by access to power and the freedom to fail.
posted by Reyturner

The real advantage of private schools: Networking with the rich and powerful.

--------

>the idea of grit is so perfectly aligned with my own assumptions and heuristics that it's disappointing to learn that it's not well supported

These are the ideas you should be the absolute most suspicious of.
posted by praemunire

Yep. The evidence and arguments that seem to confirm your pre-existing beliefs and values is the evidence and arguments of which you should be most proactively skeptical.
posted by Pouteria at 6:46 PM on May 6, 2021

Wait, this is a Jesse Singal article.

Whaaat. [this is not a question, it's an expression of dismay] Ugggggh. I would like bylines to be more prominent, please. I already know not to give any attention to Quillette or to the articles by Singal that appear on the British Psychological Society Research Digest RSS feed but didn't expect him to pop up here.

Wondering if it's worth a MeTa to discuss "maybe we shouldn't cite J.Singal". I mean, we decided that Milo and other crapheads weren't worth pointing attention towards…
posted by Lexica at 7:00 PM on May 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

Grit is just "we like that you grit your teeth, smile through trauma, and continue to contribute to capitalism." It is a close cousin of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Both demand that the individual is responsible for their circumstance, ignoring all social factors. If you take this idea that the individual is solely responsible for their circumstance to one of its logical extremes, you land on biological essentialism. Cue Singal and his ilk. Grit is gross; fuck terfs.
posted by twelve cent archie at 7:30 PM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Ah, shit. I didn’t pay attention to the byline when I posted this. My apologies everyone. He is not someone who belongs on here. I don’t know if it’s too late for a deletion. I’ll contact the mods
posted by not_the_water at 7:32 PM on May 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Alternatively, there might be another article by a more intellectually rigorous, less TERFy writer that covers the same ground that the mods could sub in. One of the comments here had a good link to an academic dismissal of grit; might be a place to start.
posted by Merus at 7:48 PM on May 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Please sub in. The conversation is certainly relevant.
posted by firstdaffodils at 7:52 PM on May 6, 2021

Mod note: I'm hesitant to delete after this much conversation, but I have added a "nofollow" tag to the Jesse Singal link to at least deny linkjuice. I'm going to check in with the team for their thoughts.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:56 PM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]