Grit increases strongly in early childhood and is related to parental background

Claudia Zoller,Anna Untertrifaller,Matthias Sutter

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-07542-4

Abstract

Grit has been identified as a very important non-cognitive skill that is positively related to educational achievements and labor market success. Recently, it has also been found to be malleable through interventions in primary schools. Yet, little is still known about its development in early childhood and the influence of family background. We present an experiment with 429 children, aged 3–6 years. We measure the level of grit as children’s perseverance in a real effort task and their willingness to challenge themselves successfully with another, more difficult task. Based on a principal component analysis, we find that grit increases strongly with age. Parents’ assessment of their child’s grit is correlated with the actual behavior of their child. Education of parents plays a role for perseverance. Yet, children’s level of patience is unrelated to their level of grit.

Highlights

Grit has been identified as a very important non-cognitive skill that is positively related to educational achievements and labor market success
Because of its importance for later outcomes in life, recent work has examined how grit can be trained in 8- to10-year-old primary school c hildren[8]
Little is known so far about the development of grit in early childhood and how it relates to family background

Summary

Introduction

Grit has been identified as a very important non-cognitive skill that is positively related to educational achievements and labor market success. Non-cognitive skills have been identified as crucial for lifetime outcomes, such as good health, higher education, and labor market success[1–5] Among these non-cognitive skills, grit has received particular attention in recent years. We consider (i) perseverance as an ability to work hard, (ii) the willingness to challenge oneself by choosing voluntarily a more difficult task when given the choice, and (iii) the likelihood to follow through with that task until completion Each of these aspects of grit has been found to be important both for educational achievements and labor market outcomes[12,13,19]. In sum our paper is the first to present evidence on the development of grit in children as young as 3 to 6 years old, is able to present both a composite score of grit that captures many facets that are associated with grit, but at the same time can present evidence for the single components separately, and adds parental background and survey data to enrich our understanding of whether and to which extent grit develops in early age

Methods

Results

Conclusion