Knowing oneself and long-term goal pursuit: Relations among self-concept clarity, conscientiousness, and grit

Abstract

Research has been dedicated to exploring the personality variables that facilitate goal pursuit. Conscientiousness and grit are closely related individual difference variables that have been postulated to influence goal pursuit. Conscientiousness refers to self-regulation in the pursuit of tasks or goals. Grit refers to the enduring effort that is applied to long term goals, and can be subdivided into two sub-components: perseverance of effort and consistency of interest. Unlike perseverance of effort which is robustly correlated with conscientiousness, consistency of interest is less strongly related to conscientiousness. The present study examines how a third variable, self-concept clarity, may interact with conscientiousness to differentially predict sub-components of grit. Results indicated that conscientiousness interacts with self-concept clarity to predict the consistency of interest component of grit; however, no interactive effect was found when predicting the perseverance of effort component of grit. The implications of these findings, as well as possible avenues for future research are discussed.