The Critical Analysis of Angela Duckworth's 'Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals'

Purpose

In the article “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals” by Angela Duckworth et al, the main finding across six studies after the authors of this article tested is to find whether if “grit” is a better quality for success than other individual characteristics. “Grit” is defined as “the perseverance and passion for long-term goals” when facing obstacles in working towards meeting goals.

Context

Grit is a study and also one of many research works by Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who has spent so many years trying to study and understand about what makes people so successful. The article was written by Duckworth and her colleagues, also expertise in psychological studies. It was published in the “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology” in 2007. Different from “Showing Up” with the informal style of writing and storytelling approach for the general audiences, Duckworth and her colleagues used formal writing style with the third-person perspective and statistical datasets included in each case of study. Although it is the same research, but this article is the different way to explain and was written especially for the expert audiences, researchers or educators.

Reasoning/ Evidence

This article comes from a psychology field. The authors decided to break their argument about grit into six studies as an evidence to prove how grit is important to one's success in life has been shown clearly in the article. In the first study, age and education level were used as a measure of grit. Based on the statistical datasets and two figures, people seemed to become grittier as they grow older. Besides, grittier adults were more likely to attain higher level of education. In the second study, people with grit were like to pursue their careers and/ or made fewer career switches as grit was correlated with conscientiousness and big five traits. In the third study, the authors discovered 'gritty students outperformed their less gritty peers' despite having lower SAT scores than GPA and smart people were less gritty than the others. In the fourth and fifth study, it mainly focused on the experience of cadets at West Point and how they managed their self-control to pass the first summer of training. Grit was a better predictor to those cadets who made it through graduate and who gave up halfway at West Point. In the sixth studies, they gave the readers a more comprehensive view of the kids at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Grit, over self-control and verbal IQ, made kids who were willing to spend more time to practice spelling were more likely to perform better and have successful outcomes. According to Galton (1892), 'ability alone, did not bring about success in any field' and this was demonstrated by Duckworth and her colleagues through six cases of study. Grit was correlated with age, conscientiousness, education level, big five traits and verbal IQ. However, grit was a better predictor of success than intelligence (according to the article 'Showing Up') and self-control. These type of evidences might be valued as grit is studied in the field of psychology.

Evaluation

The evidence is persuasive as the article gives a lot of backup information with statistical datasets/graphs included in each case of studies. Throughout the article, Duckworth and her colleagues used six cases of study as proof to answer the question in the beginning of the article 'Why do some individuals accomplish more than others of equal intelligence?” Also, the paper makes its argument effectively by using a lot of evidence, the authors strongly made the readers believe that grit plays an important role in being successful.