The sociology of grit: Exploring grit as a sociological variable and its potential role in social stratification

Abstract

This paper proposes the currently fashionable psychological notion of "grit" as a potentially useful variable in sociological analysis and explores its potential for contributing to addressing sociological concerns. Grit, comprising perseverance and passion toward longterm goals, has received growing attention within academia and from the general public as a strong predictor of achievement. Grit captures an important, noncognitive, underdeveloped aspect of agency not included in life course or stratification studies. Grit can contribute to our understanding about how the subjective beliefs that are typically treated as agency are actually translated into volitional action that constructs one's life course, a crucial potential life course mechanism. This paper suggests incorporating grit into sociological understanding of individual-level aspects of stratification, moving beyond its current conception anchored fully in psychology, to further understand what it is, where it comes from, and why it is sociologically useful.

Are Gritty People Happier than Others?: Evidence from the United States and South Korea

“…Grit and the sense of control are closely related but distinct concepts. While the sense of control captures subjective beliefs about one's agency, grit taps into more behavioral inclinations that potentially transfer one's beliefs to actual behaviors that lead to certain outcomes (Kwon 2017). These two crucial psychological resources, however, have not been empirically examined together.…”

Factors That Impact Measures of Grit among Nursing Students: A Journey Emblematic of the Koi Fish

“…Furthermore it was shown that grit highly correlates with other traits such as perseverance, consistency, and the big five personality traits of conscientiousness [3,4]. It has been suggested that grit is similar to conscientiousness or that grit is or mimics conscientiousness [5], however, it is further argued that grit, although within the "conscientiousness family", is theoretically different in that it is the passion or tenacity to achieve long-term goals, rather than simply a personality trait [6][7][8]. In addition to this, grit has been argued to be more likely to determine success beyond conscientiousness, intelligence, and physical abilities [3,9].…”

Grit as Predictor of Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment in Spain

“…For example, lower socioeconomic status children spend less time in extracurricular activities that are related to the development of grit and academic achievement (Park, 2010). In this sense, recent studies have emphasized the need for research on grit to account for the role that structural factors such as socioeconomic origins, status (i.e., the material, social, and cultural resources available to the individual) play in creating the context for grit to support behaviors that help with achievement of challenging long-term goals (Kundu, 2017; Kwon, 2017). Specifically, we propose that people who can count on higher levels of personal income will have more resources for supporting themselves in the entrepreneurial process, and this will allow them to concentrate their effort on the challenges intrinsically associated with the entrepreneurial process, thereby enhancing the relationship between grit and the probability of creating a business/becoming self-employed.…”

“…For example, lower socioeconomic status children spend less time in extracurricular activities that are related to the development of grit and academic achievement (Park, 2010). In this sense, recent studies have emphasized the need for research on grit to account for the role that structural factors such as socioeconomic origins and status (i.e., the material, social, and cultural resources available to the individual) play in creating the context for grit to support behaviors that help with achievement of challenging long-term goals (Kundu, 2017; Kwon, 2017).…”