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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED
TED
Overview
This video explores the concept of "grit," defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and its significance in achieving success. The speaker, Angela Lee Duckworth, shares her journey from teaching to psychology, driven by observations that traditional metrics like IQ don't fully predict student success. Her research across various challenging environments—military academies, spelling bees, teaching, and sales—consistently shows grit as a stronger predictor of accomplishment than talent, social intelligence, or physical health. While the science of building grit is still developing, the video highlights "growth mindset" as a promising approach and emphasizes the need for continued research and experimentation to foster this crucial trait in education.
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Chapters
- Initial observation: IQ doesn't fully explain why some students excel while others struggle, even with similar abilities.
- Teaching seventh graders revealed that hard work and sustained effort, not just innate ability, are crucial for learning difficult concepts.
- A need exists for a deeper psychological and motivational understanding of student learning beyond just cognitive measures.
This chapter sets the stage by questioning traditional assumptions about success, prompting a search for more comprehensive predictors of achievement.
The speaker's experience teaching seventh graders math, where she noticed high-IQ students not always performing best and lower-IQ students sometimes excelling with effort.
- Grit is defined as sustained passion and perseverance towards achieving very long-term goals.
- It involves having stamina and commitment to a future vision, working diligently over years, not just weeks or months.
- Grit is likened to running a marathon, emphasizing endurance and sustained effort rather than short bursts of energy.
Understanding the definition of grit is essential for recognizing and evaluating this key characteristic in oneself and others.
Grit is described as 'sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years.'
- Research across diverse, high-stakes environments consistently identified grit as a key predictor of success.
- In studies at West Point, the National Spelling Bee, and among rookie teachers, grit predicted who would succeed and persist.
- Grit was a better predictor of success in sales jobs than social intelligence, looks, or physical health.
This chapter demonstrates the broad applicability and significant impact of grit, showing it's a universal factor in overcoming challenges and achieving goals.
Predicting which West Point cadets would complete rigorous military training and which National Spelling Bee contestants would advance farthest.
- Grit is a significant factor in academic success, even predicting high school graduation rates among at-risk students.
- Despite its importance, there is currently limited scientific understanding of how to effectively build grit in children.
- Talent is not a prerequisite for grit; in fact, high talent can sometimes be unrelated or inversely related to grit.
- A promising approach to fostering grit is the concept of 'growth mindset,' which teaches that abilities can be developed through effort.
This chapter highlights the critical need for developing strategies to cultivate grit, especially in educational settings, and introduces a potential pathway through growth mindset.
Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset, where children learning that their brains grow with challenges are more likely to persevere after failure.
- The speaker acknowledges that the science of building grit is still in its early stages.
- There's a call to action for educators and researchers to rigorously test their best ideas and intuitions about fostering grit.
- This process requires a gritty approach itself: being willing to experiment, measure results, accept failure, and learn from mistakes.
This concluding section emphasizes the ongoing nature of scientific inquiry and the need for a persistent, research-driven approach to understanding and cultivating grit.
The need to be 'gritty about getting our kids grittier' by testing interventions, measuring their effectiveness, and iterating based on outcomes.
Key takeaways
- Grit, the combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals, is a more powerful predictor of success than talent or IQ.
- Sustained effort and commitment over time are crucial for achieving difficult goals, akin to running a marathon rather than a sprint.
- Grit's importance is evident across diverse fields, including military training, academic achievement, and professional success.
- While talent doesn't guarantee grit, developing a growth mindset—believing abilities can be improved through effort—is a promising strategy for fostering it.
- The scientific understanding of how to build grit is still developing, requiring ongoing research, experimentation, and a willingness to learn from failure.
Key terms
GritPerseverancePassionLong-term goalsStaminaGrowth MindsetIQTalentPsychologyMotivational perspective
Test your understanding
- What is the core definition of grit, and how does it differ from talent?
- Why did Angela Lee Duckworth shift her focus from IQ to grit in predicting success?
- How does the concept of grit apply to different challenging environments like West Point or the National Spelling Bee?
- What is a 'growth mindset,' and how is it related to building grit?
- What does the speaker mean by needing to be 'gritty about getting our kids grittier'?