The Social Valuation of Grit: Who Believes in the Power of Grit?

• In Event: 3551 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 4. Culture in Cross-National Comparison

Abstract

Grit, comprising of perseverance and passion towards long-term goals, has been suggested as a strong predictor of academic achievement and professional success. Grit as a construct, however, has been largely studied without taking into account the context that may have a great deal of influence on individual’s development of grit, limiting its sociological utility. The social value of grit (i.e., how much people value grit as a virtue) may be another significant factor that could produce cultural and social structural variance in the development of grit. Building on the literature of perceived meritocracy, I analyzed two cross-cultural data sets: Online Grit Survey and World Values Survey Wave 6 (2010-2014) collected from South Korea and the United States. Findings show that people from less advantaged social statuses tend to show stronger belief in the power of grit as key to success than those who are from more advantaged statuses in both countries. Despite this structural commonality, cultural differences are also found: only in the United States, how much respondents value grit as a virtue is positively associated with their levels of grit (more specifically, the perseverance facet of grit). This study takes the first step toward empirically investigating cross-cultural differences in the social valuation of grit, placing grit in the proper contexts and potentially contributing to a rich foundation for the knowledge with regard to grit and its structural and cultural underpinnings.

Author

• Hye Won Kwon, Higher School of Economics