Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

thousands
of people across years
and decades—to show that personalities do, in fact, change after childhood.
Brent and other personality researchers have found that a key process in personality development
involves situations and personality traits reciprocally “calling” each other. The corresponsive
principle suggests that the very traits that steer us toward certain life situations are the very same
traits that those situations encourage, reinforce, and amplify. In this relationship there is the
possibility of virtuous and vicious cycles.
For instance, in one study, Brent and his collaborators followed a thousand adolescents in New
Zealand as they entered adulthood and found jobs. Over the years, hostile adolescents ended up in
lower-prestige jobs and reported difficulties paying their bills. These conditions, in turn, led to
increases
in levels of hostility, which further eroded their employment prospects. By contrast, more
agreeable adolescents entered a virtuous cycle of psychological development. These “nice kids”
secured higher-status jobs offering greater financial security—outcomes that 
enhanced
their tendency
toward sociability.
So far, there hasn’t been a corresponsive principle study of grit.
Let me speculate, though. Left to her own devices, a little girl who, after failing to open a box of
raisins and saying to herself, “This is too hard! I quit!” might enter a vicious cycle that reinforces
giving up. She might learn to give up one thing after another, each time missing the opportunity to
enter the virtuous cycle of struggle, followed by progress, followed by confidence to try something
even harder.
But what about a little girl whose mother takes her to ballet, even though it’s hard? Even though the
little girl doesn’t really 
feel
like putting on her leotard at that moment, because she’s a little tired.
Even though, at the last practice, her ballet teacher scolded her for holding her arms the wrong way,
which clearly stung a bit. What if that little girl was nudged to try and try again and, at one practice,

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experienced the satisfaction of a breakthrough? Might that victory encourage the little girl to practice
other
difficult things? Might she learn to welcome challenge?
The year after Warren Willingham published the Personal Qualities Project, Bill Fitzsimmons became
the dean of admissions at Harvard.
Two years later, when I applied to Harvard, it was Bill who reviewed my application. I know
because, at some point as an undergraduate, I found myself involved in a community service project
with Bill. “Oh, Miss School Spirit!” he exclaimed when we were introduced. And then he ticked off,
with remarkable accuracy, the various activities I’d pursued in high school.
I recently called Bill to ask what he thought about extracurricular follow-through. Not surprisingly,
he was intimately familiar with Willingham’s research.
“I have it here somewhere,” he said, seemingly scanning his bookshelf. “It’s never far from reach.”
Okay, so did he agree with Willingham’s conclusions? Did Harvard admissions really care about
anything other than SAT scores and high school grades?
I wanted to know, because Willingham’s opinion, at the time he published his findings, was that
college admissions offices weren’t weighing follow-through in extracurriculars as heavily as his
research suggested they ought to be.
Each year, Bill Fitzsimmons explained, several hundred students are admitted to Harvard on the
merits of truly outstanding academic credentials. Their early scholarly accomplishments suggest they
will at some point become world-class academics.
But Harvard admits at least as many students who, in Bill’s words, “have made a commitment to
pursue something they love, believe in, and value—and [have done] so with singular energy,
discipline, and plain old hard work.”
Nobody in the admissions office wants or needs these students to pursue the same activities when
they get to campus. “Let’s take athletics as an example,” Bill said. “Let’s say the person gets hurt, or
decides not to play, or doesn’t make the team. What we have tended to find is that all that energy,
drive, and commitment—all that grit—that was developed through athletics can almost always be
transferred to something else.”
Bill assured me that, in fact, Harvard was paying the utmost attention to follow-through. After
describing our more recent research confirming Willingham’s findings, he told me they are using a
very similar rating scale: “We ask our admissions staff to do exactly what it appears you’re doing
with your Grit Grid.”
This helped explain why he’d maintained such a clear memory, more than a year after he’d read
my application, of how I’d spent my time outside of classes in high school. It was in my