Angela Duckworth: Grit and Human Behavior | Episode 109

Small mastery experiences—successes after struggle and challenge—are the primary mechanism for building self-efficacy and confidence, not talent alone or effortless success.

“he said oh this one i 100 believe that um mastery experiences success success experiences um are what really build this you know sense of agency um and um he then of course you know because i know you want nuance and and you're right to want the nuance and i think he wants here is extremely important if your kid has like a teflon life where you know everything comes easily in part because you make it that way and there are a lot of parents who like sort of just make their kids lives frictionless right like oh you know you're struggling for 10 minutes like i'll get you a 500 per hour tutor like like you know like oh your your teacher is not so great i'll get them fired like you know so you remove all obstacles etc that's not the kind of success experience that alexander is talking about because he's talking about um success after challenge success after struggle”

The 'logic of appropriateness' (deciding based on 'What situation is this? Who am I? What does someone like me do?') operates alongside the 'logic of consequence' (cost-benefit calculation), and much of life involves applying identity-based rather than purely rational decision-making.

“there's two kinds of logic that we can use to make choices there's the logic of consequence and then there's the logic of appropriateness so the logic of consequence is like basically cost-benefit analyses right it's like thinking like an economist like we should buy a new house do you know this essay by the way like no i'm familiar with merch though but i don't remember this one yeah so he's you know he's written so much they were like but anyway google march logic of consequence and i think it'll come up um so um so you know these are the kinds of things that economists think we do all the time and to some extent even if it's at a non-conscious level we do like they're expected value decisions um and much of our conversation has been about that right like why do people you know why are they ambitious like why do they give up etc but march said there's a kind of logic that we apply in many situations that has nothing to do with calculating costs and benefits and probabilities and it's the logic of appropriateness and he said when you are operating according to logic consequence the three questions are what are the costs what are the benefits what are the probabilities when you are operating according to the logic of appropriateness the three questions are what situation is this who am i what does someone like me do in a situation like this right and so this is all about identity right”

Uncertainty about when a stressor will end amplifies psychological suffering and can induce learned helplessness in humans, similar to unpredictable shocks in animal models studied by Martin Seligman.

“i think we're much better at somebody saying like hey you're going to have to be in quarantine for 17 days that's going to be terrible and then the following things are definitely going to happen to you brace yourself right versus like you wake up and then like you don't know what's going to happen but it's pretty bad and then like some other bad things happen that is by the way um what you do to an animal if you want to induce learned helplessness which is um you know the work of my phd advisor marty seligman um where you know you have an animal and then you like shock them i mean this is his early research and then the key is that if they experience these um uh traumas at an unpredictable way with like you know you don't know when it's gonna end you know next thing's gonna happen that's when you actually get you know the symptoms of depression um and giving up so anyway 2020 has been like you know a learned helplessness experiment”

A child can be not taking risks and appearing lazy when the underlying cause is lack of confidence from insufficient mastery experiences; in this case, the person and situation interact—the 'lazy' trait is actually situational (lack of challenge history), and can be addressed by engineering small wins.

“if your kid is like driving you nuts because they are not taking risks and they seem to be you know you know afraid of failure and that by the way that sometimes looks like laziness right even though it's underneath the surface not at all laziness you know ask yourself like maybe they are not confident because they haven't had a string of experiences to make them confident right so here again the person versus the situation like maybe your underconfident child which is a person is be that way because of series of situations um and then you have to think of and you know all the great coaches and teachers do this you kind of just like engineer these you know small wins where you know you make things like bite size enough that there can be a few at-bats and a few hits”

Teaching grit, growth mindset, and agency without addressing structural factors (poverty, terrible schools, lack of resources, systemic racism) can be incomplete or even problematic, as it may overlook the massive contextual barriers some children face.

“there is a a number of scholars including bettina love um who have asked the question you know is teaching grit anti-black um and is the whole like idea of you know shining light on resilience um uh and and and you know this whole class of this whole conversation on agency like are are we um are we doing something dangerous here um by ignoring uh structural poverty racism etc etc and um you know my first reaction being a human being was defensiveness like what like how am i racist like like you know that's that's i think natural but hopefully temporary and for me i thought like well i am the head of character lab like it is not really a good thing to just like wallow in defensiveness and maybe i should actually listen and read more so i did and that we had some conversations in person and then i read more read bettina's book i read what other critics had said and i think that um i think that the the message or the perspective that's being offered has real value and that is this that if you are asking questions about like you know under achievement and you know closing the achievement gap etc and um you know the antidote that's offered is like we should teach kids about growth mindset and grit and agency um then you might be overlooking you know the massive problem that stands in the way much more so which is you know terrible you know like lack of resources and and that's such an abstraction like terrible classrooms like terrible curriculum no computers like no no none of the things that your kids and my kids have”

The modern resolution of the person-versus-situation debate is that personality and situation interact in a conversation where personality changes the situation, the situation shapes personality back, and these factors cannot be meaningfully separated into fixed percentages like 80-20 or 70-30.

“it is both the personality of the person and their situation that determines what they will do and what's more i can say that the wrong way to think about it is like 80 20 70 30 40 60. uh because what really um your personality and your situation are like it's like a conversation where the personality of the person actually changes the situation you know conscientious people like select into jobs that require conscientiousness but then the situation kind of talks back to the personality and shapes the person”

Howard Thurman, the mentor and pastor to Martin Luther King Jr., taught that while people cannot change being born into racism or a particular family, they can control their reaction to those circumstances and are responsible for how they respond.

“and howard thurman has all these um sermons about how um there is um what he would like say like you know the you the final consent he was like you know you cannot like change that you were born into a racist society you cannot change that you are born into a certain family um but you can always uh change how you react to it right like you and you're responsible for how you react to it and and victor frankel said the same thing um uh about his experience in the concentration camps right that that that you know terrible things can happen to you um over which you do not have control but you can control your reaction um and and i don't even say that you can control 100 but i do think you have some control over your reaction”

A parent's or mentor's role is to engineer appropriately-sized challenges for an individual—not too big (causing discouragement) and not too small (providing no challenge)—and monitor and adjust based on the particular child and circumstances.

“the the engineering problem for a parent is then to figure out the right size of challenge for the kid like in the next moment in time and i think that we often get it wrong like the challenge is just too big um or the challenge is too small and then so it's sort of monitoring and adjusting based on your particular child and the circumstances involved”

Habits and personal rules (never-or-always behaviors) free up cognitive resources for higher-level thinking by automating routine behaviors, and function as self-control devices for behaviors that are good in the long run but less immediately rewarding.

“the biggest reason why we have habits is that um they they put us on autopilot and they free up cognitive resources for other things yeah right i mean if every time you had to like you know cut yourself uh you know uh uh like grapefruit you had to like devote all of your energy to like first i lift my wrist then i clench my fist around the night it's like no it's like there are there are things that can like run on autopilot like cut the grave again how to do that and habits are like that there's another reason i think colin would agree with me that habits actually are a self-control device so um if you're doing something as a matter of habit like exercising or eating a salad for lunch or writing thank you notes or doing other things which are good for you and others in the long run but maybe not the funnest easiest thing to do in the short run being on autopilot is a very good thing for that”

Secure attachment in early childhood (where children feel safe enough to venture away from caregiver and explore) predicts ability to take emotional risks and process criticism later in life, because past mastery experiences create confidence.

“and the the thing to note about the secure attachment style is that because the child has security they actually um uh so so you you imagine a mother in a room and they have their you know toddler child if that is a secure attachment then um the behavior of the child say in a new room with new toys is not gonna be to cling to the mother it is because the child is attached that they will venture you know even five ten feet away from the where the mother is sitting and pick up a new toy and then maybe run back and make sure mom's there but and so i think i am as whatever i have that's like okay i can handle this criticism it is probably because i've had enough mastery experiences to feel secure”

Situation modification (changing aspects of one's environment) is often more effective than relying purely on mental strategies (reframing, self-talk) for regulating emotion and maintaining self-control.

“and this work was done with um collaborators including james gross at stanford um and james gross actually originally um and mostly studies emotion and one of the things that's interesting about regulating your your anger is if you have a bad temper or your sadness if you tend toward melancholy or your happiness if you want more of that or i guess if you wanted less of that is um that people can you know use these like sort of mental strategies like what i pay attention to how i'm gonna frame things my self-talk but also you can just change your actual situation so for example you know if you constantly get into arguments at thanksgiving with your brother-in-law then maybe you should sit at the other end of the table or like not go to thanksgiving with your brother-in-law or like make sure that like you're watching football while your brother-in-law is like cutting up the pie right”

Children who are difficult or biologically predisposed to challenging behavior evoke harsh, strict parenting from most caregivers, which makes the parent-child interaction complex and not purely driven by parental choice or skill.

“when a child acts out um and there's like a pain in the ass it evokes a certain kind of parenting behavior um so it's not just that it's not exactly that simple even for parenting right like if you're extremely agreeable and grateful and empathic as a child you will evoke a different kind of parenting from the same parent who would have a very different response if you were ungrateful callous unempathetic mean right so that's been um one of you know the things that like there are parents who um god bless them like they they do have kids who biologically genetically like are inclined to be like really difficult and one of the breakthrough discoveries in that um like area of psychopathology is that um yes there's a genetic component etc yes parenting does inflate like if you have you know abusive parents and so here's the complication when you like ask those not so great to be with kids to be in a room with like a total stranger who obviously is not you know like they're not their parents you can get those kids evoke a kind of like strict harsh disciplinary because the adult is just like shut up sit in that chair stop throwing things so it's complicated”

Talent (measured by IQ or objective physical ability) correlates near-zero with grit, and sometimes even negatively; highly talented people may disengage because they can meet thresholds of success without maximum effort, unlike lower-talent individuals who must persist to achieve.

“talent measured by iq scores or objective measures of physical ability are are not very correlated with grit um the correlations usually hover around zero and um and by the way i should define grit grit is uh the tendency to pursue long-term goals over years and years with passion and perseverance so this quality of grit is correlated about zero with measures of ability sometimes it's actually negative actually so at west point for example the higher your sat score um the lower um you know statistically um on average your grit score”

Being good at something helps but doesn't guarantee passion for it; people can be exceptionally skilled at activities they dislike, and true passion requires both competence and affinity (interest).

“i sat down on the subway something like 15 years ago but i won't forget it next to this guy was like a really long subway ride i don't know i was going to the bronx or something anyway it was in new york and um i was sitting next to this guy and i struck up a conversation he was a computer programmer and um what i learned in that conversation is that he was really good at computer programming and he hated it and i kept arguing back with this guy total stranger but i was like how can that be like people are good at what they like and they like what they're good at and he's like not me like i'm really really really good at this which is why i do it and it makes a living and i really don't like it”

The consistency of personality traits across situations historically showed a maximum correlation of about 0.3, suggesting situations matter more than personality traits in determining behavior.

“the correlation that he observed across situations had like a maximum of about point three um and sometimes people call this like the point three ceiling right so um if i observe somebody in at home versus at work you know the correlation in a data set of lots of people who are observed in both situations might might only approach point three”

Freud was correct that much of our behavior, emotion, and motivation occurs below conscious awareness, but he was wrong that unconscious material cannot be brought into conscious awareness through dialogue and reflection.

“one thing he was very right about is that so much of our um our behavior and even our emotion and our motivation happens below the surface of consciousness and the idea that we do things um and not always knowing that we do them is important but it's not just that you know insight because you could say like oh really it took i took freud and 50 years of science after freud to figure that it's like how much of our behavior and our emotion and motivation could be going on without our conscious awareness”

Feedback is more effective when it is specific and detailed rather than vague or softened, even though it is emotionally harder to receive; vague feedback doesn't provide clear guidance for improvement.

“at the time let me tell you i was not appreciating the specificity of the negative feedback right and the dosage of it because like after about five minutes i was like hey let's talk about something else like no 35 more minutes of specific things to say about like how that didn't go well um so i didn't respond well and you're right that you know to answer your question directly i think i felt especially bad because i immediately got like an avalanche of criticism that was um both authoritative um and um detailed um and kind of you know um unvarnished um i probably would have gone to sleep earlier or like slept more soundly if you know like there had been a little less of it if it were a little less detailed um but but i do think you know like it was better to have gotten that than a kind of like hey it could have gone better all right so let's talk about something else right that wasn't your best effort but dinner was great yeah you know but whatever like i kind of like this idea let's talk about”

Deliberate practice requires three elements: hyper-intentional focus on specific weaknesses, concentrated practice alone (as proxy for concentration), and immediate feedback, followed by repetition of the cycle; most people don't experience this quality of practice daily.

“in andre's view the first is that there's this kind of like hyper intentionality about a very specific weakness or um or a goal um that you're trying to address the second is that you are really practicing with complete concentration and many of his research studies including the ones that i did with him we measured deliberate practice by whether you were doing practice alone because um that was like a proxy for concentration and then the third element was feedback right and um ideally in most circumstances immediate feedback um in some circumstances you could argue that like there's some benefit to a delay and then the rep repetition of that cycle”

A randomized experiment on high school students showed that those taught situation modification techniques achieved better academic outcomes than those taught about willpower alone or a neutral control group.

“and we extended that in the study of um uh middle school actually we've done it in all different age groups i'll tell you about a study we do with high school students where we randomly assigned high school students to watch this little video it was about five minutes long um and then we told some similar things but the intervention wasn't very long and we were like you know you can change your situation you know like people think when they have to exercise self-control to like study or do on school they think it's all willpower but like actually like you could for example put your phone in another room like you could make sure that you study in a place that like people aren't walking into and out of all the time so in that study there was a control group that learned about willpower and how important it is to like you know use willpower to accomplish your goals and then there was a neutral control group and what we found is that the condition that increased academic goal attainment best was the one where you just explained to kids like hey you can modify your situation”

People are more likely to give up on goals when either their self-efficacy (belief they can succeed) declines or the value they place on the goal diminishes, and these can be influenced by experience.

“if you ask the question like when do people quit i think it's either because they the value of the goal um goes down for whatever reason or their belief that they can achieve it that's a really interesting point right the value of the goal goes down”

Self-efficacy (belief you can succeed if you try) differs from locus of control (belief in whether outcomes are within your control); Bandura emphasizes control over behavior and performance, not necessarily outcomes, which is more precise and actionable.

“he said oh there's a very important difference he said um i'm more interested in saying that like i can control you know my behavior you know not necessarily that that behavior is going to like magically make everything the way i want right what what locus of control is about is more just like you know like in the grand scheme is the actual outcome going to be you know my doing or not he's like all i want to say is that people have agency over their behavior uh over their um uh uh performance not necessarily like that you're gonna get hired just because you're the most qualified candidate but that you could control like your own behavior and performance”