Author Jesse Singal, a well-known author to first-year seminar students, presented at the university to give a talk to students and faculty about the idea of grit and how it affects society.
Jesse Singal is the cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported, the author of the novel The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills, and a former staff writer and editor at New York Magazine.
“It’s a very interesting American fad. The idea of grit has been around for a long time. And it basically means the quality of perseverance, being someone who’s willing to face down adversity in pursuit of a goal” Singal said.
Singal’s argument about grit is that it does not appear to be that different from conscientiousness, which is a well-established personality trait psychologists have been studying for a long time.
“There is a fair amount of talk that the study of grit could help us close, long-seated gaps in the education system, like the idea that poor kids do worse than rich kids on average, not always, but on average. So I think basically, none of what I just said turned out to be true.”
Singal instead suggested that tests such as the SAT or IQ actually are more correlated with success than grit as far as we know.
A point Singal really hit hard on was that in the United States since we really have not chipped away at inequality, there has not been much done to make the system fairer.
“Where you end up in America at the end of the day, mostly not entirely, but is mostly a product of where you came from and what kind of neighborhood you grew up in,” Singal said.
“If you grew up in a family of educated people who already have degrees, you are surrounded by positive reinforcement and have gathered knowledge about how school works and how to succeed in it.”
This is where the difference in class comes into the education system, particularly college.
“College introduces all sorts of new challenges that are just unfamiliar if your family isn’t full of people who went to college and it’s difficult,” Signal said.
“So I do think there’s a sense in which kids from more educated families are likely better equipped to handle learning than those who come from less educated backgrounds. Which again leads back to class.”
Singal left the crowd with this final message.
“I have no doubt that many of you genuinely have grit and that’s part of the reason you’re in this room. But our society’s obsession with sort of tweaking and measuring and optimizing individuals does have its limits and its costs.”
