Achievement motivation and grit’s perseverance of effort among collegiate athletes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Grit has almost exclusively been examined in relation to performance success. Achievement motivation theory (AMT) provides a framework to start examining psychosocial factors that may be associated with promoting grit. Thus, we examined the direct and indirect relationships from athletes’ perceived motivational climate, implicit beliefs, and goal orientations to their grit levels. Collegiate student-athletes (N = 523; 47% men) completed self-report measures assessing these constructs. Through multilevel modelling, grit’s perseverance of effort varied minimally at the team level and was only predicted by individuals’ task orientation and incremental beliefs. Structural equation modelling supported our hypothesised, most parsimonious model with the direct and indirect relationships of a task-involving climate through athletes’ incremental beliefs and task orientation explained 65% of their perseverance of effort scores. Perceptions of an ego-involving climate were related to athletes’ entity beliefs and ego orientation; these three constructs were not significantly related to our grit outcome. Our findings suggest AMT may be useful to understand how athletes develop the ability to persevere over time. Practically, our results suggest the greater athletes’ grit levels, as represented by perseverance of effort, the more likely they are to have task orientation and incremental beliefs, which can be promoted by a task-involving climate.