Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature.
verifiedrich profile · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2017
Credé, Marcus; Tynan, Michael C.; Harms, Peter D.
How this was studied
A meta-analytic synthesis — it pools many primary studies rather than running a single design, so there is no single-study diagram.
What this article reports
The findings we extracted from this work, normalized into Principia’s relationship form (X → Y). Each feeds the synthesized models below.
grit → overall job performance
Models this article informs
The meta-analytic priors this article contributes evidence to — its place in the broader synthesis.
In the authors’ words
The article’s own abstract.
Grit has been presented as a higher order personality trait that is highly predictive of both success and performance and distinct from other traits such as conscientiousness. This paper provides a meta-analytic review of the grit literature with a particular focus on the structure of grit and the relation between grit and performance, retention, conscientiousness, cognitive ability, and demographic variables. Our results based on 584 effect sizes from 88 independent samples representing 66,807 individuals indicate that the higher order structure of grit is not confirmed, that grit is only moderately correlated with performance and retention, and that grit is very strongly correlated with conscientiousness. We also find that the perseverance of effort facet has significantly stronger criterion validities than the consistency of interest facet and that perseverance of effort explains variance in academic performance even after controlling for conscientiousness. In aggregate our results suggest that interventions designed to enhance grit may only have weak effects on performance and success, that the construct validity of grit is in question, and that the primary utility of the grit construct may lie in the perseverance facet. (PsycINFO Database Record
What the literature says about it
Attributed, open-access quotes from other works that cite this article, plus the citation-graph verdict tally. Corroborations and disputes, in one place — the honest-broker view.
supports “Credé et al.’s meta-analysis, encompassing 88 studies and 66,807 participants, revealed that grit demonstrated modest yet significant correlations with academic performance ( ρ = 0.18), college GPA ( ρ = 0.17), and high school GPA ( ρ = 0.16) [49].”
supports “The meta-analysis also showed that grit is moderately correlated with performance and retention, and strongly correlated with conscientiousness [27].”
disputes “For example, Credé et al. (2017)‘s meta-analysis found that PE had an advantage over CI or overall grit in predicting performance.”
supports “Two comprehensive meta-analyses (Credé et al., 2017; Lam & Zhou, 2022) found that grit was only moderately correlated with performance and academic grades.”
supports “This finding aligns with meta-analyses showing that grit was moderately correlated with performance and academic grades (Credé et al., 2017; Lam & Zhou, 2022).”
supports “…individuals with high levels of grit are able to make better use of their abilities because they are less distracted by short-term goals and less discouraged by failures and setbacks that are commonly encountered in many performance areas [16], which can lead to better performance in those areas.”
supports “Extant research indicates a significantly positive correlation between grit and a range of achievements and performance [19, 23, 49].”
supports “A meta-analysis of Grit research (Credé et al. 2017), which analyzed 584 effect sizes across 88 independent samples (totaling 66,807 individuals), revealed that Grit, initially proposed as a higher-order trait predicting of success and performance, shows an excessively strong correlation ( ρ =…”
Ancillary research
Neighbouring works in the citation graph around this article.
- 10.1186/s40359-025-02933-4
- 10.1186/s40359-024-01809-3
- 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1468464
- 10.1186/s40594-025-00536-4
- 10.1155/2024/6388800
- 10.3390/jintelligence13010011
Assembled from Principia’s registry — bibliographic record, extracted effect sizes, the models they inform, and open-access citing literature.