Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Developmental
Psychology
44 (2008): 814–30.
Warren H. Willingham, 
Success in College: The Role of Personal Qualities and Academic Ability
(New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1985). Around the time Warren Willingham was conducting this study, his teenage
son Dan went off to college to study psychology. Dan is now a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and, in the spirit
of his father’s legacy, dedicated to helping kids benefit from advances in cognitive psychology. My favorite of his books is 
Why Don’t
Students Like School?
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009).
The predictive validity of standardized achievement tests for academic and professional outcomes is well-
documented. See the work of psychologists Paul Sackett and Nathan Kuncel in particular. My claim here is not that achievement tests
are invalid, per se, but rather that they are an incomplete and imperfect metric for what students know and can do. See Angela L.
Duckworth, Patrick D. Quinn, and Eli Tsukayama, “What 
No Child Left Behind
Leaves Behind: The Roles of IQ and Self-Control in
Predicting Standardized Achievement Test Scores and Report Card Grades,” 
Journal of Educational Psychology
104 (2012): 439–
51. See also James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz, ed., 
The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role
of Character in American Life
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
Willingham, 
Success in College
, 213.
:
Michael Wines, “Extracurricular Work Spurs Success in College,” 
Los Angeles Times
, October 17,
1985.
Willingham, 
Success in College
, 193. For a review of the advantages and disadvantages of various
approaches to measuring qualities like grit, see Duckworth and Yeager, “Measurement Matters.”
:
Brian M. Galla et al., “Cognitive and Noncognitive Determinants of High School Grades, SAT Scores, and
College Persistence,” 
Journal of Educational Psychology
(under review, 2015).
:
Alyssa J. Matteucci et al., “Quantifying Grit from Extracurricular Activities: A Biodata Measure of Passion and
Perseverance for Long-Term Goals” (manuscript in preparation, 2015).
:
Robertson-Kraft and Duckworth, “True Grit”
Brent W. Roberts and Avshalom Caspi, “The Cumulative Continuity Model of Personality Development:
Striking a Balance Between Continuity and Change in Personality Traits Across the Life Course,” in 
Understanding Human
Development: Dialogues with Lifespan Psychology
, ed. Ursula M. Staudinger and Ulman Lindenberger (Norwell, MA: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2003), 183–214.
:
William James claimed in 1890 that by age thirty, personality is “set like plaster.” Quoted in Brent W. Roberts and
Wendy F. DelVecchio, “The Rank-Order Consistency of Personality Traits from Childhood to Old Age: A Quantitative Review of
Longitudinal Studies,” 
Psychological Bulletin
126 (2000): 6.
:
Ibid. Avshalom Caspi, Brent W. Roberts, and Rebecca L. Shiner, “Personality Development: Stability and
Change,” 
Annual Review of Psychology
56 (2005): 453–84. Brent W. Roberts, Kate E. Walton, and Wolfgang Viechtbauer,
“Patterns of Mean-Level Change in Personality Traits Across the Life Course: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies
,”
Psychological Bulletin
132 (2006): 1–25.
Brent W. Roberts, Avshalom Caspi, and Terrie E. Moffitt, “Work Experiences and Personality
Development in Young Adulthood,” 
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
84 (2003): 582–93.
William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard College, in an interview with the
author, February 17, 2015.
William R. Fitzsimmons, “Guidance Office: Answers from Harvard’s Dean, Part 3,”