That night, I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I lay awake thinking: Holy smokes! What Willingham calls “follow-through” sounds a lot like grit!
Immediately—desperately—I wanted to see if I could replicate his findings.
One motive was practical.
Like any self-report questionnaire, the Grit Scale is ridiculously fakeable. In research studies, participants have no real incentive to lie, but it’s hard to imagine using the Grit Scale in a high-stakes setting where, in fact, there’s something to gain by pretending that “I finish whatever I begin.” Quantifying grit as Willingham had done was a measurement strategy that could not easily be gamed. Not, at least, without outright lying. In Willingham’s own words: “Looking for clear signs of productive follow-through is a useful way to mine the student’s track record.”
But the more important goal was to see whether follow-through would predict the same showing-up-instead-of-dropping-out outcomes that are the hallmark of grit.
For the support of a new longitudinal study, I turned to the largest philanthropic funder in education: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I soon learned that the foundation is especially interested in why college students drop out in such large numbers. At present, the dropout rate for two- and four-year colleges in the United States is among the highest in the world. Escalating tuitions and the byzantine labyrinth of financial aid in this country are two contributing factors. Woefully inadequate academic preparation is another. Still, students with similar financial circumstances and identical SAT scores drop out at very different rates. Predicting who will persist through college and earn their degree and who won’t is among the most stubborn problems in all of social science. Nobody has a very satisfying answer.
In a meeting with Bill and Melinda Gates, I had an opportunity to explain my perspective in person. Learning to follow through on something hard in high school, I said, seemed the best-possible preparation for doing the same thing later in life.
In that conversation, I learned that Bill himself has long appreciated the importance of competencies other than talent. Back in the days when he had a more direct role in hiring software programmers at Microsoft, for instance, he said he’d give applicants a programming task he knew would require hours and hours of tedious troubleshooting. This wasn’t an IQ test, or a test of programming skills. Rather, it was a test of a person’s ability to muscle through, press on, get to the finish line. Bill only hired programmers who finished what they began.
* * *
With generous support from the Gates Foundation, I recruited 1,200 seniors and, just as Willingham had done, asked them to name their extracurricular activities (if they had any), when they’d participated in them, and how they’d distinguished themselves doing them, if at all. Around the lab, while we were doing this study, we began calling this measure what it looks like: the Grit Grid.
Directions: Please list activities in which you spent a significant amount of time outside of class. They can be any kind of pursuit, including sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer activities, research/academic activities, paid work, or hobbies. If you do not have a second or third activity, please leave those rows blank:
Activity
Grade levels of participation 9-10-11-12
Achievements, awards, leadership positions, if any
Following Willingham’s lead, my research team calculated Grit Grid scores by quantifying multiyear commitment and advancement in up to two activities.
Specifically, each activity students did for two years or more earned a grit point; activities students did for only one year earned no points and weren’t scored further. Activities that students pursued for multiple years and in which they could point to some kind of advancement (for example, member of the student government one year and treasurer the next) each earned a second point. Finally, when advancement could reasonably be deemed “high” versus just “moderate” (president of the student body, MVP of the basketball team, employee of the month), we awarded a third grit point.
In sum, students could score anywhere from zero on the Grit Grid (if they’d participated in no multiyear commitments at all) to six points (if they pursued two different multiyear commitments and, in both, demonstrated high achievement).
As expected, we found that students with higher Grit Grid scores rated themselves higher in grit, and so did their teachers.
Then we waited.
After graduating from high school, students in our sample ended up at dozens of colleges throughout the country. After two years, only 34 percent of the 1,200 students in our study were enrolled in a two- or four-year college. Just as we expected, the odds of staying in school depended heavily on Grit Grid scores: 69 percent of students who scored 6 out of 6 on the Grit Grid were still in college. In contrast, just 16 percent of students who scored 0 out 6 were still on track to get their college degrees.
In a separate study, we applied the same Grit Grid scoring system to the college extracurriculars of novice teachers. The results were strikingly similar. Teachers who, in college, had demonstrated productive follow-through in a few extracurricular commitments were more likely to stay in teaching and, furthermore, were more effective in producing academic gains in their students. In contrast, persistence and effectiveness in teaching had absolutely no measurable relationship with teachers’ SAT scores, their college GPAs, or interviewer ratings of their leadership potential.
* * *
Considered together, the evidence I’ve presented so far could be interpreted in two different ways. I’ve been arguing that extracurricular activities are a way for young people to practice, and therefore develop passion and perseverance, for long-term goals. But it’s also possible that following through with extracurriculars is something only gritty people do. These explanations aren’t mutually exclusive: it’s entirely possible that both factors—cultivation and selection—are at play.
My best guess is that following through on our commitments while we grow up both requires grit and, at the same time, builds it.
One reason I think so is that, in general, the situations to which people gravitate tend to enhance the very characteristics that brought us there in the first place. This theory of personality development has been dubbed the corresponsive principle by Brent Roberts, the foremost authority on what leads to enduring changes in how people think, feel, and act in different situations.
When Brent was a psychology graduate student at Berkeley, the prevailing view was that, after childhood, personalities are more or less “set like plaster.” Brent and other personality researchers have since collected enough longitudinal data—following, literally, 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 vici
ous 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, 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 activities, as much as anything else in my record, that he found evidence that I’d prepared myself for the rigors—and opportunities—of college.
“My sense, from being in admissions for over forty years,” Bill concluded, “is that most people are born with tremendous potential. The real question is whether they’re encouraged to employ their good old-fashioned hard work and their grit, if you will, to its maximum. In the end, those are the people who seem to be the most successful.”
I pointed out that extracurricular follow-through might be a mere signal of grit, rather than something that would develop it. Bill agreed, but reaffirmed his judgment that activities aren’t just a signal. His intuition was that following through on hard things teaches a young person powerful, transferable lessons. “You’re learning from others, you’re finding out more and more through experience what your priorities are, you’re developing character.
“In some cases,” Bill continued, “students get into activities because somebody else, maybe the parent, maybe the counselor, suggests it. But what often happens is that these experiences are actually transformative, and the students actually learn something very important, and then they jump in and contribute to these activities in ways that they and their parents and their counselor never would’ve imagined.”
* * *
What surprised me most about my conversation with Bill was how much he worried about the kids who’d been denied the opportunity to practice grit in extracurricular activities.
“More and more high schools have diminished or eliminated arts and music and other activities,” Bill told me, and then explained that, of course, it was primarily schools serving poor kids who were making these cuts. “It’s the least level playing field one could possibly imagine.”
Research by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his collaborators reveals that affluent American high school students have been participating in extracurricular activities at consistently high rates for the past few decades. In contrast, participation among poor students has been dropping precipitously.
The widening gap in extracurricular participation between rich and poor has a few contributing factors, Putnam explains. Pay-to-play sports activities like traveling soccer teams are one obstacle to equal participation. Even when participation is “free,” not all parents can afford the uniforms. Not all parents are able or willing to drive their kids to and from practices and games. For music, the cost of private lessons and instruments can be prohibitive.
Just as Putnam would have predicted, there is a worrisome correlation between family income and Grit Grid scores. On average, Grit Grid scores for the high school seniors in our sample who qualified for federally subsidized meals were a full point lower than those for students who were more privileged.
* * *
Like Robert Putnam, Geoffrey Canada is a Harvard-trained social scientist.
Geoff is about as gritty as they come. His passion is enabling kids growing up in poverty to realize their potential. Recently, Geoff has become something of a celebrity. But for decades he toiled in relative obscurity as the director of a radically intensive education program in New York City called the Harlem Children’s Zone. The first kids to make it all the way through are now in college, and the program’s unusually comprehensive approach, coupled with unusually successful results, has attracted national attention.
A few years ago, Geoff came to Penn to deliver our commencement speech. I managed to shoehorn a private meeting into his busy schedule. Given our limited time, I got straight to the point.
“I know you’re trained as a social scientist,” I began. “And I know there are things we have tons of evidence for and aren’t doing in education, and there are things we have no evidence for and keep doing anyway. But I want to know, from all you’ve seen and done, what you really think is the way to dig kids out of poverty.”
Geoff sat forward and put his hands together like he was about to pray. “I’ll tell you straight. I’m a father of four. I’ve watched many, many kids who were not my own grow up. I may not have the random-assignment, double-blind studies to prove it, but I can tell you what poor kids need. They need all the things you and I give to our own children. What poor kids need is a lot. But you can sum it up by saying that what they need is a decent childhood.”
About a year later, Geoff gave a TED talk, and I was lucky enough to be in the audience. Much of what Harlem Children’s Zone did, Canada explained, was based on rock-solid scientific evidence—preschool education, for instance, and summer enrichment activities. But there’s one thing his program provided without sufficient scientific evidence to justify the expense: extracurricular activities.
“You know why?” he asked. “Because I actual
ly like kids.”
The audience laughed, and he said it again: “I actually like kids.”
“You’ve never read a study from MIT that says giving your kid dance instruction is going to help them do algebra better,” he admitted. “But you will give that kid dance instruction, and you will be thrilled that that kid wants to do dance instruction, and it will make your day.”
* * *
Geoffrey Canada is right. All the research I talked about in this chapter is nonexperimental. I don’t know if there’ll ever be a day when scientists figure out the logistics—and ethics—of randomly assigning kids to years of ballet class and then waiting to see if the benefit transfers to mastering algebra.
But, in fact, scientists have done short-term experiments testing whether doing hard things teaches a person to do other hard things.
Psychologist Robert Eisenberger at the University of Houston is the leading authority on this topic. He’s run dozens of studies in which rats are randomly assigned to do something hard—like press a lever twenty times to get a single pellet of rat chow—or something easy, like press that lever two times to get the same reward. Afterward, Bob gives all the rats a different difficult task. In experiment after experiment, he’s found the same results: Compared to rats in the “easy condition,” rats who were previously required to work hard for rewards subsequently demonstrate more vigor and endurance on the second task.
My favorite of Bob’s experiments is among his most clever. He noticed that laboratory rats are generally fed in one of two ways. Some researchers use wire-mesh hoppers filled with chow, requiring rats to gnaw at the food pellets through small openings in the mesh. Other researchers just scatter pellets on the floor of the cage. Bob figured that working for your supper, so to speak, might teach rats to work harder on an effortful training task. In fact, that’s exactly what he found. He began his experiment by training young rats to run down a narrow plank for a reward. Then, he divided the rats into two groups. One group lived in cages with hopper feeders, and the other in cages where food pellets were scattered about the floor. After a month of working to obtain food from the hopper, rats performed better on the runway task than rats who instead merely wandered over to their food when they were hungry.
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