Motivational correlates of perseverance and passion for long-term goals

Von Culin, Tsukayama, and Duckworth (2014) investigated how an individual's attitude to pleasure in life effects their perseverance and passion for long-term objectives in their article Unpacking grit: Motivational correlates of perseverance and enthusiasm for long-term goals (grit).

The researchers employed pleasure, meaning, and engagement as ways to happiness to study how they correspond to an individual's grit, which has two component elements: effort and interest. Individuals may have varied ideas on what happiness is; it may be obtained through pleasure for one person, significance for another, and involvement for yet another.  Nevertheless, an individual can either pursue any of the approaches separately or in combination. The researchers were thus investigating how the approach one adopts defines their grittiness along the dimension of effort and interest. Their supposition was that individuals who are motivated by engagement and meaning are likely to be associated with the perseverance of effort while those who prefer pleasure are associated with interest (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014).

From this supposition, the researchers came up with two hypotheses to be explored.

H1: “Grittier individuals would pursue happiness primarily through engagement and meaning rather than through pleasure.”

H2: “The effort facet of grit is expected to be most strongly associated with the pursuit of engagement and, to a lesser degree, with the pursuit of meaning.”

This research is comprised of two cross-sectional studies. In the first study, participants were drawn from a website that allows adults to fill questionnaires self-reporting on “positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions.” (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014). A total of 15,874 adults took part in the study by completing questionnaires between 2008 and 2010 (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014). Variables were measured using the short grit scale as well as the orientations to happiness scale. Two path models were used to determine the unique effects of each of the orientations to happiness on grit. In two studies, the three orientations were included as predictors while age and gender were applied as demographic covariates. Nested model comparisons were also conducted to test the differences in coefficients across the factors of grit. The nested model comparison tests were used to generate chi-square statistics used to test the difference in constrained parameters. The findings of this first study supported the researcher’s hypotheses.

The second study was also a cross-sectional study that drew its participants from a crowdsourcing website. The two websites differ: the first one is about psychology research while the other is not. There were 317 participants in this study who participated on reading an advert on the website (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014). The same methodology, short grit scale and orientations to happiness scale, were used for this group of participants. All the participants in this study had a lower score on all constructs as compared to those from the first study. However, the results were all consistent with the first study results.

On the whole, the results of this study proved that “grittier individuals were more likely than less gritty individuals to seek happiness through engagement.” (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014). There was also a small-medium association between grit and meaning. The magnitude of the association was least between grit and pleasure.

Article Critique

Introduction and statement of purpose

The purpose of this article was to investigate how the orientations of happiness correlate to the strength of grit. The phenomenon which the researchers were interested in can be identified from the title of the article as well as the introduction segment on the first page. Numerous other authors have researched the phenomenon of grit, and it is seen that the philosophical underpinnings behind this research were formulated in the 1860’s.

The researchers, however, failed to explicitly state the significance of the study as they do not link it to any particular field.

Overview and hypothesis

This section provides adequate background information about two main variables, grit and motivation. The researchers linked the study to previous literature and studies performed on the same topic and drew on this to formulate the purpose of their research.

Moreover, the authors seem to rely heavily on previous studies in justifying the methods they used for sampling. For instance, the short grit scale and orientations of happiness scale are methods borrowed from existing studies. The researchers also clearly stated the hypothesis and the correlations they aimed to investigate. The hypotheses clearly follow the various literature that the authors cite within the article. However, it can be argued that these hypotheses are difficult to measure as their analysis relies on subjective variables.

Legal and ethical issues

The study shows that participants agreed to partake in the study after reading advertisements posted on the websites. However, there is not mentioned if measures were taken to protect the participants. There is also no indication of whether their confidentiality was addressed or not. Looking at the qualitative part of the study that involved completing questionnaires, it would be ethical to clarify whether their identities would be concealed (Evans & Rooney, 2014). There is no mention of whether the data and responses were stored or destroyed.

Method

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between the various orientation of happiness, and the two facets of grit: interest and effort. Although not explicitly stated, the researchers used quantitative methods which are appropriate for this study which was trying to determine how variables correlate.

Procedure and measures

Conducted two cross-sectional studies using data from questionnaires are filled by online respondents. The self-reporting questionnaires have various limitations as a tool for data collection; some respondents may exaggerate, some may forget important details, and others may be too embarrassed to reveal some personal details (Eysenck, 2004). The authors tried to eliminate bias by using two groups: one was used as the experimental group and the other one as a control group.

Results

This study shows that the results proved the researchers’ hypotheses to be correct. The researchers described and represented the statistical results for two studies on separate tables. This is an indication that they aimed to clearly bring out the relationship between the two groups used for this research. Furthermore, appropriate statistical tests were employed. On the whole, the results can be said to be valid and indicative.

Discussion and conclusion

This section provides an adequate interpretation of the results and findings of the study. The authors discuss the results in relation to previous research, and it is shown that they are consistent with those previous studies.

The researchers also highlight the limitations of their research, stating that neither of the two studies employed randomized sampling methods. They also add that “neither study recruited individuals in especially challenging achievement domains, a hallmark of prior grit research.” (Von Culin, Tsukayama, & Duckworth, 2014).

References

Evans, A., & Rooney, B. J. (2014). Methods in psychological research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Eysenck, M. W. (2004). Psychology: an international perspective. Hove, Psychology Press.

Von Culin, K., Tsukayama, E., & Duckworth, A. (2014). Unpacking grit: Motivational correlates of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(4), 306-312. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.898320Top of FoBottom of FormTop of Form

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