Grit (personality trait)
Encyclopedia
Grit in psychology
is a positive, non-cognitive trait
, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation
to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lay within a gritty individual’s path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include "perseverance," "hardiness,"
"resilience
,” “ambition,” and “need for achievement.” These constructs can be conceptualized as individual differences and have been studied in psychology since 1907 when William James
challenged the field to further investigate how certain individuals are capable of accessing richer trait reservoirs enabling them to accomplish more than the average person. Although the last decade has seen a noticeable increase in research focused on achievement oriented traits, there continues to be difficulty in aligning specific traits and outcomes.
, not the sprint
.
and in particular, with perseverance. As mentioned earlier, the ability to stick with and pursue a goal over a long period of time is an important aspect of Grit. This area of positive psychology has been interested in the process of perseverance as a positive indicator of long term success. Grit’s inclusion of the perseverance construct is perhaps unsurprising as Angela Duckworth was a doctoral candidate under Martin Seligman
.
. This relationship has been found in scholastic achievement as well as in job performance. As such, one might expect that grit would be strongly correlated with intelligence. In fact, this prompted one of the early questions asked in Grit research, “Why do some individuals accomplish more than others of equal intelligence?”. Somewhat surprisingly, in four separate samples, Grit was found to be either orthogonal to or slightly inversely correlated with intelligence. This means that Grit, unlike many traditional measures of performance is not tied to intelligence. As the researchers have suggested, this helps explain why some very intelligent individuals do not consistently perform well over long periods of time.
personality model, which are a group of broad personality dimensions consisting of openness to experience
, conscientiousness
, extraversion, agreeableness
, and neuroticism
. In one study by Duckworth and Quinn, the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S) and 12-item self-report measure of Grit (Grit–O) measuring Grit was strongly correlated with conscientiousness (r = .77, p <.001 and r = .73, p <.001) (2009). While Grit is related to conscientiousness measures, it also differs from conscientiousness in important ways. For example, while both Grit and conscientiousness are often associated with short term accomplishments, Grit is also associated with longer term and multi-year goals. This long-term persistence and dependability are important aspects that make Grit unique from conscientiousness. Another personality characteristic that is often linked to Grit is the need for achievement. One way in which Grit differs from the need for achievement is that individuals with high scores in Grit often set extremely long-term goals for themselves and pursue them deliberately even without positive feedback, while need for achievement lacks this long-term component.
(1961) describes need for achievement as a drive to complete manageable goals that enable the individual to receive immediate feedback
. In contrast to need for achievement, Gritty individuals consciously set long-term goals that are difficult to attain and do not waver from these difficult goals, regardless of the presence of feedback. Additionally, need for achievement has been studied for almost 50 years and has been found to positively correlate to self-efficacy
and learning goal orientation. These links have not yet been tested in the Grit literature.
, and adversity to achieve set goals and are uniquely positioned to reach higher achievements than others who lack similar stamina.
In a series of six studies Duckworth et al. proposed, developed, and tested a two-factor Grit scale with notable results. In addition to validating their Grit scale, the authors also found support suggesting that Grit provided incremental predictive validity for education and age above and beyond the Big 5 personality traits (Study 2); that higher levels of Grit were more highly associated with cumulative grade point average (GPA) in an Ivy league
sample when compared to those with lower Grit levels (r = .25, p < .01; Study 3); that Grit predicted retention
after their first summer in two classes of cadets at the United States Military Academy
(Study 4); and that participants in a National Spelling Bee with higher Grit scores typically work harder and longer than less Gritty peers, ultimately resulting in better performance. This series of studies provides empirical evidence that an individual difference conceptualized as Grit can account for significant variance
in performance across a variety of settings. Grit predicts beyond the typical and unrelated cognitive construct of IQ and can account for variance over and above what is observed in the Big 5 personality construct of conscientiousness.
In 2009, Duckworth and Quinn found additional support for the Grit construct when they developed and validated a more condensed version of the Grit Scale (Grit-S) by removing four of the previous items and improving its psychometric properties. Using samples from the data collected in their 2007 studies, the authors were able to achieve complementary results that suggested the positive relationships between Grit and educational attainment, GPA, retention in college, and success in a national spelling bee competition.
Questions may surface relating to what additional cognitive and non-cognitive traits play complementary roles in this Grit equation. Of additional interest may be how the distinctive environmental conditions, specifically the interrelationships of emotional and cognitive load
, might moderate and assist in explaining why some individuals succumb to significant challenges or struggle with obstacles that block their path to goal achievement, while others are able to overcome these barriers. The United States military believes that this and similar constructs may assist in explaining why some soldiers are better equipped to handle the psychological trauma
of combat. Other on-going work includes investigations of the combined or multiplicative impacts of both cognitive and Grit-like predictors of achievement in leader
adaptability
situations.
Cox, C.M. (1926). Genetic studies of genius: Vol. 2. The early mental traits of three hundred geniuses. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press (p.218).
Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 92 (6), p. 1087.
Duckworth, A.L. & Quinn, P.D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (GRIT–S). Journal of Personality Assessment, Vol 91(2), pp. 166-174.
Galton, F. (1892). Hereditary Genius. New York: Appleton.
Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The big-five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1216-1229.
Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life. Intelligence, 24, 79–132.
Hancock, P.A., & Szalma, J.L. (2008). Stress and Performance. In Hancock, P.A. & Szalma (Eds.). Performance Under Stress. Cornwall: MPG Books.
Heintz, Jr. P.; Steele-Johnson, D. (2004). Clarifying the conceptual definitions of goal orientation dimensions: Competence, control, and evaluation. Organizational Analysis, 12, 5-19.
James, W. (1907, March 1). The energies of men. Science, 25, pp. 321-332.
Luthar, S.S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of relsilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543-562.
Luthar, SS., Doernberger, C.H., & Zigler, E. (1993). Resilience is not a unidimensional construct: Insights from a prospective study on inner-city adolescents. Development and Psychopathology, 5, 703-717.
Maddi, S.R., (2006). Hardiness: The courage to grow from stresses. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 160-168.
Maltby, J., Day, L., Giles, D., Gillett, R.; Quick, M., Langcaster-James, H., & Linley, P.A., (2008). Implicit Theories of a Desire for Fame. British Journal of Psychology, 99, 279-292.
McClelland, D.C. (1961). The achieving society. Oxford, England: Van Nostrand.
Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T.J., Boykin, A.W., Brody, N., et al. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51, 77-101.
Packard, E. (2007). Grit: It's what separates the best from the merely good. Monitor on Psychology, 38(10), p. 10.
Peterson, C., Seligman, M.E. (2004). Character Strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Phillips, J. M., & Gully, S. M. (1997). Role of goal orientation, ability, need for achievement, and locus of control in the self-efficacy and goal-setting process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 792–802.
Schulz, R. & Heckhausen, J. (1996). A life-span model of successful aging. American Psychologist, 51, 702-714.
Singh, K. & Jha, S.D. (2008). Positive and negative affect, and Grit as predictors of happiness and life satisfaction. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, Vol 34(Spec Issue), pp. 40-45.
Terman, L.M. & Oden, M.H. (1947). The gifted child grows up: Twenty-five years’ follow-up of a superior group. Oxford, England: Stanford University Press.
Weis, E., Chen, T.R., May, M., Matthews, M. & Zaccaro, S. (in progress). Cognitive and dispositional predictors of leader adaptability under stress.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
is a positive, non-cognitive trait
Trait theory
In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over...
, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lay within a gritty individual’s path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include "perseverance," "hardiness,"
Hardiness (psychological)
Hardiness , alternatively referred to as psychological hardiness, personality hardiness, or cognitive hardiness in the literature, is a personality style first introduced by Suzanne C. Kobasa in 1979...
"resilience
Psychological resilience
Resilience in psychology refers to the idea of an individual's tendency to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function...
,” “ambition,” and “need for achievement.” These constructs can be conceptualized as individual differences and have been studied in psychology since 1907 when William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
challenged the field to further investigate how certain individuals are capable of accessing richer trait reservoirs enabling them to accomplish more than the average person. Although the last decade has seen a noticeable increase in research focused on achievement oriented traits, there continues to be difficulty in aligning specific traits and outcomes.
Definition of Grit
Grit is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Building upon biographical collections of famous leaders in history, researchers and scientists have reached similar conclusions about high achieving individuals. Specifically, those individuals who were deemed more successful and influential than their contemporary counterparts typically possessed traits above and beyond that of normal ability. While ability was still critically important, these individuals also possessed “zeal” and “persistence of motive and effort.” Duckworth and colleagues (2007) believe this dual-component of Grit to be a crucial differentiator from similar constructs. Grit is conceptualized as a stable trait that does not require immediate positive feedback. Individuals high in Grit are able to maintain their determination and motivation over long periods of time despite experiences with failure and adversity. Their passion and commitment towards the long-term objective is the overriding factor that provides the stamina required to “stay the course” amid challenges and set-backs. Essentially, the Grittier person is focused on winning the marathonMarathon
The marathon is a long-distance running event with an official distance of 42.195 kilometres , that is usually run as a road race...
, not the sprint
Sprint (race)
Sprints are short running events in athletics and track and field. Races over short distances are among the oldest running competitions. The first 13 editions of the Ancient Olympic Games featured only one event—the stadion race, which was a race from one end of the stadium to the other...
.
Grit and Positive Psychology
Grit also ties in with positive psychologyPositive psychology
Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...
and in particular, with perseverance. As mentioned earlier, the ability to stick with and pursue a goal over a long period of time is an important aspect of Grit. This area of positive psychology has been interested in the process of perseverance as a positive indicator of long term success. Grit’s inclusion of the perseverance construct is perhaps unsurprising as Angela Duckworth was a doctoral candidate under Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman
Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. His theory of "learned helplessness" is widely respected among scientific psychologists....
.
Grit and Intelligence
One of the best predictors of future achievement has been intelligenceIntelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
. This relationship has been found in scholastic achievement as well as in job performance. As such, one might expect that grit would be strongly correlated with intelligence. In fact, this prompted one of the early questions asked in Grit research, “Why do some individuals accomplish more than others of equal intelligence?”. Somewhat surprisingly, in four separate samples, Grit was found to be either orthogonal to or slightly inversely correlated with intelligence. This means that Grit, unlike many traditional measures of performance is not tied to intelligence. As the researchers have suggested, this helps explain why some very intelligent individuals do not consistently perform well over long periods of time.
Grit and Personality Measures
The Grit measure has been compared to the Big FiveBig Five personality traits
In contemporary psychology, the "Big Five" factors of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality....
personality model, which are a group of broad personality dimensions consisting of openness to experience
Openness to experience
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model Openness involves active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity. A great deal of psychometric research...
, conscientiousness
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is the trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation , and need for achievement. It is an aspect of what has...
, extraversion, agreeableness
Agreeableness
Agreeableness is a tendency to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five major dimensions of personality structure, reflecting individual differences in concern for cooperation and social harmony. People who score...
, and neuroticism
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology. It is an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depressed mood...
. In one study by Duckworth and Quinn, the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S) and 12-item self-report measure of Grit (Grit–O) measuring Grit was strongly correlated with conscientiousness (r = .77, p <.001 and r = .73, p <.001) (2009). While Grit is related to conscientiousness measures, it also differs from conscientiousness in important ways. For example, while both Grit and conscientiousness are often associated with short term accomplishments, Grit is also associated with longer term and multi-year goals. This long-term persistence and dependability are important aspects that make Grit unique from conscientiousness. Another personality characteristic that is often linked to Grit is the need for achievement. One way in which Grit differs from the need for achievement is that individuals with high scores in Grit often set extremely long-term goals for themselves and pursue them deliberately even without positive feedback, while need for achievement lacks this long-term component.
Comparative Analysis of Grit vs. Perseverance
Perseverance is the steadfast pursuit of a task, mission, or journey in spite of obstacles, discouragement, or distraction. In contrast, Grit is a trait that is antecedent to perseverance. Grit enables an individual to persevere in accomplishing a goal despite obstacles over an extended period of time. When compared with the construct of persistence, Grit adds a component of passion for the goal. This goal passion also contributes to the ability of the individual to sustain effort over the long term.Comparative Analysis of Grit vs. Hardiness
Maddi (2006) defines hardiness as a combination of attitudes that provide the courage and motivation to do the hard, strategic work of turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities. While Grit is primarily a measure of an individual’s ability to persist in obtaining a specific goal over an extended time period (Duckworth et al., 2007), hardiness refers to an individual’s ability to persist through difficult circumstances and does not address the individual’s long term persistence toward a specific goal. Maddi (2006) developed a theoretical model of hardiness as a tool for developing resilience.Comparative Analysis of Grit vs. Resilience
Resilience is a dynamic process in which an individual overcomes significant adversity, usually in the form of a life changing event or difficult personal circumstances. Resilience can be conceptualized as an adaptive response to a challenging situation. Grit involves maintaining goal focused effort for extended periods of time, often while facing adversity but does not require a critical incident. Importantly, Grit is conceptualized as a trait while resilience is a dynamic process. Finally, resilience has been almost exclusively studied in children (cf. Luther, Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993) who are born into “at-risk” situations. Although resilience researchers recognize that adults likely demonstrate resilience in a similar manner to children, the resilience process has not been studied in a mature population.Comparative Analysis of Grit vs. Ambition
Ambition is broadly defined as the desire for attainment, power, or superiority. In contrast to ambitious individuals, Gritty individuals do not seek fame or external recognition for their achievements. Ambition is often associated with a desire for fame. Unlike ambitious individuals, gritty individuals do not seek to distinguish themselves from other people, but to obtain personal goals.Comparative Analysis of Grit vs. Need for Achievement
McClellandDavid McClelland
David C. McClelland was an American psychological theorist. Noted for his work on need theory, he published a number of works from the 1950s until the 1990s and developed new scoring systems for the Thematic Apperception Test and its descendants...
(1961) describes need for achievement as a drive to complete manageable goals that enable the individual to receive immediate feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
. In contrast to need for achievement, Gritty individuals consciously set long-term goals that are difficult to attain and do not waver from these difficult goals, regardless of the presence of feedback. Additionally, need for achievement has been studied for almost 50 years and has been found to positively correlate to self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
and learning goal orientation. These links have not yet been tested in the Grit literature.
Scientific Findings
The primary scientific findings on Grit come from Duckworth and colleagues’ examination of Grit as an individual difference trait capable of predicting long-term success. It was proposed that individuals who possess a drive to tirelessly work through challenges, failuresFailure
Failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic...
, and adversity to achieve set goals and are uniquely positioned to reach higher achievements than others who lack similar stamina.
In a series of six studies Duckworth et al. proposed, developed, and tested a two-factor Grit scale with notable results. In addition to validating their Grit scale, the authors also found support suggesting that Grit provided incremental predictive validity for education and age above and beyond the Big 5 personality traits (Study 2); that higher levels of Grit were more highly associated with cumulative grade point average (GPA) in an Ivy league
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
sample when compared to those with lower Grit levels (r = .25, p < .01; Study 3); that Grit predicted retention
Employee retention
Employee retention refers to the ability of an organization to retain its employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic...
after their first summer in two classes of cadets at the United States Military Academy
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
(Study 4); and that participants in a National Spelling Bee with higher Grit scores typically work harder and longer than less Gritty peers, ultimately resulting in better performance. This series of studies provides empirical evidence that an individual difference conceptualized as Grit can account for significant variance
Variance
In probability theory and statistics, the variance is a measure of how far a set of numbers is spread out. It is one of several descriptors of a probability distribution, describing how far the numbers lie from the mean . In particular, the variance is one of the moments of a distribution...
in performance across a variety of settings. Grit predicts beyond the typical and unrelated cognitive construct of IQ and can account for variance over and above what is observed in the Big 5 personality construct of conscientiousness.
In 2009, Duckworth and Quinn found additional support for the Grit construct when they developed and validated a more condensed version of the Grit Scale (Grit-S) by removing four of the previous items and improving its psychometric properties. Using samples from the data collected in their 2007 studies, the authors were able to achieve complementary results that suggested the positive relationships between Grit and educational attainment, GPA, retention in college, and success in a national spelling bee competition.
Future Directions
As of February 2010, a psychological database search for “Grit” in the title of scientific and research articles only produced three additional articles since Duckworth and colleagues proposed the operationalized concept of Grit in 2007. Despite the dearth of immediately available research on Grit, one should note that the many semantic definitions of similar constructs described above may be a better description of the interest in this construct. Despite their nuances in definitions and operationalization, there exists ample curiosity in the importance of a Grit-like component and its effect on individual’s drive or motivation to achieve personally meaningful goals.Questions may surface relating to what additional cognitive and non-cognitive traits play complementary roles in this Grit equation. Of additional interest may be how the distinctive environmental conditions, specifically the interrelationships of emotional and cognitive load
Cognitive load
The term cognitive load is used in cognitive psychology to illustrate the load related to the executive control of working memory . Theories contend that during complex learning activities the amount of information and interactions that must be processed simultaneously can either under-load, or...
, might moderate and assist in explaining why some individuals succumb to significant challenges or struggle with obstacles that block their path to goal achievement, while others are able to overcome these barriers. The United States military believes that this and similar constructs may assist in explaining why some soldiers are better equipped to handle the psychological trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
of combat. Other on-going work includes investigations of the combined or multiplicative impacts of both cognitive and Grit-like predictors of achievement in leader
Leader
A leader is one who influences or leads others.Leader may also refer to:- Newspapers :* Leading article, a piece of writing intended to promote an opinion, also called an editorial* The Leader , published 1909–1967...
adaptability
Adaptability
Adaptability is a feature of a system or of a process. This word has been put to use as a specialised term in different disciplines and in business operations. Word definitions of adaptability as a specialised term differ little from dictionary definitions...
situations.
Articles Cited
Conan, N (10 Sep 09). Talk of the Nation: Army to train soldiers in emotional resiliency [Conversation with BG Rhonda Cornum (Director, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, U.S. Army) and Dr. Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania)]. Transcript from National Public Radio. Accessed 20 February 2010 from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112717611.Cox, C.M. (1926). Genetic studies of genius: Vol. 2. The early mental traits of three hundred geniuses. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press (p.218).
Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 92 (6), p. 1087.
Duckworth, A.L. & Quinn, P.D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (GRIT–S). Journal of Personality Assessment, Vol 91(2), pp. 166-174.
Galton, F. (1892). Hereditary Genius. New York: Appleton.
Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The big-five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1216-1229.
Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life. Intelligence, 24, 79–132.
Hancock, P.A., & Szalma, J.L. (2008). Stress and Performance. In Hancock, P.A. & Szalma (Eds.). Performance Under Stress. Cornwall: MPG Books.
Heintz, Jr. P.; Steele-Johnson, D. (2004). Clarifying the conceptual definitions of goal orientation dimensions: Competence, control, and evaluation. Organizational Analysis, 12, 5-19.
James, W. (1907, March 1). The energies of men. Science, 25, pp. 321-332.
Luthar, S.S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of relsilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543-562.
Luthar, SS., Doernberger, C.H., & Zigler, E. (1993). Resilience is not a unidimensional construct: Insights from a prospective study on inner-city adolescents. Development and Psychopathology, 5, 703-717.
Maddi, S.R., (2006). Hardiness: The courage to grow from stresses. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 160-168.
Maltby, J., Day, L., Giles, D., Gillett, R.; Quick, M., Langcaster-James, H., & Linley, P.A., (2008). Implicit Theories of a Desire for Fame. British Journal of Psychology, 99, 279-292.
McClelland, D.C. (1961). The achieving society. Oxford, England: Van Nostrand.
Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T.J., Boykin, A.W., Brody, N., et al. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51, 77-101.
Packard, E. (2007). Grit: It's what separates the best from the merely good. Monitor on Psychology, 38(10), p. 10.
Peterson, C., Seligman, M.E. (2004). Character Strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Phillips, J. M., & Gully, S. M. (1997). Role of goal orientation, ability, need for achievement, and locus of control in the self-efficacy and goal-setting process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 792–802.
Schulz, R. & Heckhausen, J. (1996). A life-span model of successful aging. American Psychologist, 51, 702-714.
Singh, K. & Jha, S.D. (2008). Positive and negative affect, and Grit as predictors of happiness and life satisfaction. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, Vol 34(Spec Issue), pp. 40-45.
Terman, L.M. & Oden, M.H. (1947). The gifted child grows up: Twenty-five years’ follow-up of a superior group. Oxford, England: Stanford University Press.
Weis, E., Chen, T.R., May, M., Matthews, M. & Zaccaro, S. (in progress). Cognitive and dispositional predictors of leader adaptability under stress.