Grit is barely distinguishable from ordinary conscientiousness and predicts performance only weakly.
What the evidence shows
Angela Duckworth's work popularised 'grit' — passion and perseverance for long-term goals — as a key to achievement, from spelling bees to West Point. The book and TED talk made it a fixture in schools and hiring.
A meta-analysis of 88 samples (Credé, Tynan & Harms, 2017) found grit's correlation with performance was modest, that its 'perseverance' facet did nearly all the work while 'passion' added little, and that grit overlaps so heavily with the established personality trait of conscientiousness as to be almost redundant. Grit interventions showed weak effects. The trait is real and mildly useful, but the claim that it out-predicts talent and IQ, or is a distinct new ingredient of success, is not supported.
Sources
Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101
Introduced grit and reported it predicted outcomes such as educational attainment and retention at West Point.
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087 →Credé, M., Tynan, M. C., & Harms, P. D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 492–511
Grit correlated only modestly with performance, was driven by its perseverance facet, and overlapped strongly with conscientiousness.
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000102 →