Ever Failed, Try Again, Succeed Better: Results from a Randomized Educational Intervention on Grit

Abstract

We show that grit, a non-cognitive skill that has been shown to be highly predictive of achievement, is malleable in the childhood period and can be fostered in the classroom environment. Our evidence comes from the evaluation of a randomized educational intervention implemented in two independent elementary school samples in Istanbul. Outcomes are measured via a novel incentivized real effort task and performance in standardized tests. We find that treated students are 1) more likely to choose to undertake a more challenging and more rewarding task against an easier but less rewarding alternative, 2) less likely to give up after failure, 3) more likely to exert effort to accumulate task-specific ability, and consequently, 4) more likely to succeed and collect higher payoffs. The intervention also has a large positive impact on students’ standardized test scores. Treated students score 0.28 standard deviations higher in a standardized math test, and 0.13 standard deviations higher in a standardized Turkish test at follow-up.

Keywords: non-cognitive skills, grit, perseverance, field experiments, randomized interventions

JEL Classification: C91, C93, D03, I28