Grit beats talent

The later Nobel laureate James Buchanan used to advise his graduate students: "keep your ass in the chair". Woody Allen claimed that "80% of success is showing up." And Gary Player used to say: "The harder you work, the luckier you get." Some recent experiments show they are right.

Leonie Gerhards and Christina Gravert got subjects to solve anagrams, paying them for each one they got right. Subjects could pay to skip a hard anagram or to switch to easier less well-paid ones. They found that subjects that did not skip or switch earned much more than those who did - even controlling for ability, as measured by the number of anagrams they had solved earlier. "Grit trumps talent", they conclude.

This finding, I suspect, has external validity. Among people with high IQs, there is little correlation between intellectual ability and career success. Beyond a certain point - attained by most readers of this blog - what matters is not so much intellect as personality traits such as stickability. This chimes with my personal experience. The most materially successful of my university contemporaries aren't generally the most intellectually gifted ones, but ones who had perseverance - in large part, perhaps, because they found careers they enjoyed.

Indeed, what looks like talent is in fact often the product of grit. Dennis Bergkamp, for example, is generally regarded as one of the most talented footballers of recent years, but:

There, a worn-out brick wall still stands testament to the innate footballing mind, maturity and drive present even in an 8 year old Dennis. He spent countless hours practising, kicking the ball against it, experimenting with different ways of how to control it, seeing how it bounced and how many times, how that affected how it came back … things that still don’t occur to most professional footballers. It was here that his technique was refined to such precision that he would aim for a corner of a particular brick, each time with different pace, power and spin to see how the ball’s trajectory changed.

This sounds to me like deliberate, mindful practice - which is the key to success, as Anders Ericsson has written (pdf):

Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years.

It is this that gave rise to the 10,000 hours rule, as immortalized by the Greatest Living American*.

One under-rated reason for this, I suspect, is that ability is context-specific, so immersing oneself in a particular context for a long time is pretty much the only way to succeed.

Now, I don't say all this to suggest that talent is irrelevant: one reason why people practice football or music for long periods is that they feel they might be good at it - although this feeling isn't sufficient for success.

Instead, I say it to reinforce something I said recently. I suspect that most jobs - maybe not all but most - are like Gerhards and Gravert's anagram task; they require grit at least as much as talent. And, therefore, perhaps intellect is over-rated.

* I find Matthew Syed's account of this more persuasive than Malcolm Gladwell's.

Comments

[Gepap]

I agree that smart people grossly overestimate the importance of intellectual abilities when it comes to success.

Another thing to point out though is that since so much of success is based on having practiced one's skills in one area, the belief that because someone is really great at one thing that they must be great at everything (ie. the notion that because one is a great CEO of company X, they are going to be a great CEO of any company) is highly suspect, and I would say that we are surrounded daily by the evidence of that.

[lower middle class]

Even a lifetime of hardwork can be undermined by the malice of others. Success is as much a function of others actions toward you as your own actions toward self improvement.

[Scott F]

A Meta-analysis of the 10,000 Hour Rule from Case Western Reserve:

"We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued"

I have learned - much to my disappointment - that most of Malcolm Gladwell's claims do not hold up well to scrutiny.

Grit is an overwhelmingly attractive notion which is why it must be subjected to our highest level of skeptical examination. Even if 10,000 hours of "the right kind" of practice (Weasel Alert!) were a determining factor in success in any endeavor, why do we assume Grit is not a heritable trait just like any other "talent".

[donald]

Chris,

I've not read Syed's book, but I have read articles of his on this subject and, well, I'm surprised you rate him!

That everyone that succeeds at, say, sport practices a lot, tells us very little about the balance between hard work and talent, because they're all naturally talented. It simply tells us that the balance between success of very talented people depends on hard work and points us to this self evident truth - success at anything depends on nature, nurture and luck.

[chairman]

"Beyond a certain point - attained by most readers of this blog"

Oh, you.

[chris]

@ Donald, Scott - I see your points. One difficulty here is the hindsight bias and selection effects: we see successful people and then look for grit/talent whatever. We need also to look at failures.
One virtue of experiments such as the one I cited is that they overcome these problems.
Also relevant here might be the case of the Polgar sisters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

[The Peoples Pawn]

I agree with the writer; in my experience initiative matters more than raw talent. However, this assumes all else being equal. Take two teenaged aspiring piano players. Access to a good instrument, teachers, time to play, general levels of stress and health, all matter much more than talent and grot combined. Clearly the same caveats extend to aspiring doctors, artists, scientists, etc....The aggregate data show this in that the more financial resources one's family has, the higher his or her chances of success. The less appealing side is that luck almost matters much more than talent and grit combined.

[Metatone]

I don't dispute the value of practice/experience and persistence.

However, I think it's worth noting that all of this is biased towards really constrained, stable fields of endeavour.

Sports, chess, anagrams, music.

The reason plenty of individuals who have grit aren't at the top of things is that much of advancement in life and careers isn't about constrained rule optimising.

[donald]

@Chris I'm not sure you do see my point. I didn't make it very clearly though.

Your theory - grit trumps talent - is probably true most of the time, (as you say is true of lots of things in the social sciences). And the experiments you mention support this theory.

But at the top level of sport or music we can't measure talent and effort accurately enough to say. Theory would, though, suggest that neither trumps the other. If success depends on genes and hard work you need an awful lot of both to make it to the top of sport or music.

All of which is why I don't rate Syed. He fits the data to a thesis to sell some books/articles.

[Alex]

Yes grit trumps talent when you're already fairly talented. So what? Grit is mostly just conscientiousness. In general, for predicting income, IQ is somewhat more important.

But neither of these things predict more than 25% of the variance in income. How about talking about what actually does explain that variance? Now that would be interesting to read about...