Citizen grit: Effects of domain-specificity, perseverance, and consistency on political judgment

Abstract

Tenaciousness and persistence contribute to achievement in key areas such as school and work. Research on Grit has helped demonstrate such effects, but also has raised questions regarding whether Grit is best examined as a global or a domain-specific construct, whether it is most insightful to treat Grit as a single property or to model its perseverance and consistency domains separately, and what Grit contributes to analyses that is not already captured by extant constructs highly correlated with Grit measures. These questions are addressed in the present study, with focus on the possible impact of Grit on the nature and quality of citizens' judgments in the political sphere, and with data from 2500 respondents on a nationally representative U.S. survey. Analyses reveal domain-specific Grit effects on political knowledge, rejection of conspiracy theories, and differentiation between high- and low-quality political candidates. In contrast with research that has identified strong effects for Grit's perseverance dimension, effects on political judgment emanate primarily from consistency of interest.