Research Shows "grit" more important than IQ

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I was previously familiar with research suggesting that intelligence only accounts for ~60% of achievement, but I found this pretty interesting.

One often purported interpretation of the world is that people are helpless to their given life situation. This often comes up in discussions about income mobility and financial success. Statistics aside, I've always thought that perspective was pretty depressing. Not surprisingly, it's those who demonstrate self-efficacy who tend to be more successful, leaving those wallowing in self-pity behind.

In other words, your self-induced melancholy is what is holding you back, not the "man" or the 1%.

One of the most oft suggested reasons for the redistribution of income via social programs is the idea that successful people just happen upon their wealth via luck or chance, indicating "unfairness" and the need for government correction. But if people are more successful mostly because they work harder, how fair is it to take their money and give it to someone else who hasn't demonstrated the same pattern of effort?

Moreover, if grit is one of the best indicators of success, what does inhibiting it by redistributing that success mean? If we want more success from more people, it appears we are doing precisely the wrong thing by (1) removing the impetus to demonstrate grit (getting wealth without earning it) and (2) removing the natural reinforcement from people who do demonstrate grit.

Through her research at the University of Pennsylvania — and firsthand experience teaching in New York City's public schools —psychologist Angela Duckworth has found that the ability to withstand stress and move past failures to achieve a goal is the best indicator of future success.

After teaching in New York City, Duckworth went to graduate school to become a psychologist, where she studied what types of people were successful at West Point Military Academy, the National Spelling Bee, in classrooms, and beyond. Again, she said, "it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit."

"What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty," Duckworth said in her TED talk. "Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent."

More in the article.

http://www.businessinsider.com/grit-is-more-important-than-iq-2013-5
 
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Interesting to read.

Also, something that most successful people already realize and most unsuccessful people want to deny. Clich
 
figures a site called "business insider" would come up with nonsense like this.
 
figures a site called "business insider" would come up with nonsense like this.

Business Insider is merely reporting the research by a psychologist. What do you think, they made it all up and called it "research"?
 
Business Insider is merely reporting the research by a psychologist. What do you think, they made it all up and called it "research"?

they reported the information from the article wrong.

They are talking about what leads students to get better grades...
The effect of self-discipline on final grades held even when controlling for first-marking-period grades, achievement-test scores, and measured IQ

you can't extend this to the working world.
On top of that she did not stratify her research, she says she studied students from different backgrounds, but didn't sort out their performance by their backgrounds which most researchers would have done.

The article basically just says if you study more you get better grades, big duh.
Don't know how Business Insider got what they did from it.
 
and also, if your IQ is higher of course you are going to study less, you are smarter so you don't need to read things over as much to understand them. That seems like another big obvious point to me.
 
This should surprise no one who's been paying attention in life.
 
they reported the information from the article wrong.

They are talking about what leads students to get better grades...


you can't extend this to the working world.
On top of that she did not stratify her research, she says she studied students from different backgrounds, but didn't sort out their performance by their backgrounds which most researchers would have done.

The article basically just says if you study more you get better grades, big duh.
Don't know how Business Insider got what they did from it.

Yeah, on top of this it also seems like there's anecdotal evidence too.

In the working world, your success is going to depend a lot on WHO you know, maybe even more than WHAT you know. That's based on my anecdotal evidence.

Two takeaways: perseverance is important to success and IQ is not the only thing that determines success. "No shit" to both of those things.
 
Is this that 90% perspiration to 10% inspiration stuff again? Because that just seems really sweaty.
 
they reported the information from the article wrong.

They are talking about what leads students to get better grades...


you can't extend this to the working world.
On top of that she did not stratify her research, she says she studied students from different backgrounds, but didn't sort out their performance by their backgrounds which most researchers would have done.

The article basically just says if you study more you get better grades, big duh.
Don't know how Business Insider got what they did from it.

The article was very explicit with that information. I even quoted it. So let's not pretend that there's some manipulation of data and attempt to mislead people.

If you read the abstract to the study, it's clear that there's much more involved than correlating study time with grades.

In a longitudinal study of 140 eighth-grade students, self-discipline measured by self-report, parent report, teacher report, and monetary choice questionnaires in the fall predicted final grades, school attendance, standardized achievement-test scores, and selection into a competitive high school program the following spring. In a replication with 164 eighth graders, a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, a questionnaire on study habits, and a group-administered IQ test were added. Self-discipline measured in the fall accounted for more than twice as much variance as IQ in final grades, high school selection, school attendance, hours spent doing homework, hours spent watching television (inversely), and the time of day students began their homework. The effect of self-discipline on final grades held even when controlling for first-marking-period grades, achievement-test scores, and measured IQ. These findings suggest a major reason for students falling short of their intellectual potential: their failure to exercise self-discipline.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/12/939.short

and also, if your IQ is higher of course you are going to study less, you are smarter so you don't need to read things over as much to understand them. That seems like another big obvious point to me.

Which ignores one of the major outcomes of the study: intelligence was NOT the biggest correlate.
 
if you don't need to study as much to do well, you may not study at all.
regardless I don't think that the study can be related to the real working world.
 
if you don't need to study as much to do well, you may not study at all.
regardless I don't think that the study can be related to the real working world.

Which is irrelevant if you don't succeed. And that's what the research was looking at.

These results may not be equivalent to adults and the money they earn. But I am willing to bet that they are. Do you have any evidence that they may not be?
 
its all who you know. Send your kids to private school, go to church/synagogue and you are set.
 
its all who you know. Send your kids to private school, go to church/synagogue and you are set.

Anecdotally, I agree (somewhat). But I would argue that self-driven people intentionally seek out networking opportunities that help them succeed. I doubt many accounts of networking -> success occurred as a result of people having their connections handed to them on a silver platter. Every successful person I have known was connected to people because he made it that way and worked to keep those connections in one way or another. Also, I believe success opens the door for more networking. There's probably a cascading effect.
 
This is of course very evident...a MOTOR is all you really need in life. It's the most important thing. I'm raising young children and I could give a fuck if they read at their age appropriate level right now...what I really want to see from them is a motor - a willingness to DO things, to follow through with things and a SPIRIT about the things they do.

However, I would say having that drive, that motor, that work ethic, is every bit as genetic, or ingrained in your DNA, as raw intelligence is.

Both can be honed and improved, but some people simply do not have the innate ability to get up and make shit happen every day from sunrise to sunset, the same way some people don't have the innate ability to pass a statistical thermodynamics class.

So, boiling these "findings" down to your right wing narrative about redistribution of wealth and government handouts is stupid. The fact is, more and more money is getting funneled to the top and that's not a good situation. Do you really think it can be fixed by hard work? And individual can fix his or her situation through hard work, but the country's issue with wealth distribution is due to much bigger factors than that, and we can't ignore it because we've figured out that grit is more important than intelligence.
 
Anecdotally, I agree (somewhat). But I would argue that self-driven people intentionally seek out networking opportunities that help them succeed. I doubt many accounts of networking -> success occurred as a result of people having their connections handed to them on a silver platter. Every successful person I have known was connected to people because he made it that way and worked to keep those connections in one way or another. Also, I believe success opens the door for more networking. There's probably a cascading effect.

People who don't network don't understand how this works. They think relationships just magically appear.

Sending your kids to fancy private schools to make great connections requires making enough money to afford it or making the sacrifices to afford it. It requires following up on the initial introductions and building a bond that will lead to something of value. That's all work and hard work at that.

Even if you look at something like the right church/synagogue, you still have to put in time and effort for that to translate into anything. You can go to the same church/synagogue for years and be relatively unknown to everyone else. If you want that attendance to mean something, you have to work at becoming known and valued.
 
This is of course very evident...a MOTOR is all you really need in life. It's the most important thing. I'm raising young children and I could give a fuck if they read at their age appropriate level right now...what I really want to see from them is a motor - a willingness to DO things, to follow through with things and a SPIRIT about the things they do.

However, I would say having that drive, that motor, that work ethic, is every bit as genetic, or ingrained in your DNA, as raw intelligence is.

Both can be honed and improved, but some people simply do not have the innate ability to get up and make shit happen every day from sunrise to sunset, the same way some people don't have the innate ability to pass a statistical thermodynamics class.

So, boiling these "findings" down to your right wing narrative about redistribution of wealth and government handouts is stupid. The fact is, more and more money is getting funneled to the top and that's not a good situation. Do you really think it can be fixed by hard work? And individual can fix his or her situation through hard work, but the country's issue with wealth distribution is due to much bigger factors than that, and we can't ignore it because we've figured out that grit is more important than intelligence.

Also true. They've found that activity level (the "motor"), self-confidence, desire to take on leadership roles, and popularity (this one is interesting - it's a risk-taking outcome, apparently we humans are attracted to people who take risks, so long as the risks aren't too extreme. Moderate risk-takers attract others to them thus becoming "popular") all have important genetic components. Thankfully, they also have environmental components and we can improve in all of them...if we care to.
 
Oddly it's not even in the same category, findings debunk. :icon_chee
 
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