Authors Tyler Phillips (Research Psychologist & Research and Content Consultant) and Dr Etienne van der Walt (neurologist and CEO & founder of Neurozone®)
In our everyday language, terms like resilience, grit, and hardiness are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings, especially when examined through a scientific lens. Understanding these differences is crucial for accurately addressing mental health and personal development. Let’s explore these concepts to clarify how they differ and how they relate to one another.
What is Resilience?
Resilience is the ability to cope effectively with stress, challenges, and setbacks. It involves two key components: bouncing back and bouncing forward. Bouncing back means returning to the baseline relaxed physiological state after facing a stressor, while bouncing forward means learning from the experience so that you can better handle similar challenges in the future. This adaptability – the ability to change, adapt, and reorganize in response to shifting circumstances – is the core quality of resilience.
What is Hardiness?
Hardiness is characterized by three attitudes that help people face stress:
- Control: Believing you can influence your surroundings in useful ways.
- Commitment: Staying actively engaged in events rather than becoming passive and isolated.
- Challenge: Viewing change as a normal part of life and an opportunity for growth.
With these attitudes, hardy individuals accept difficulties, persist despite them, and take proactive steps to overcome stressors.
What is Grit?
Grit is about perseverance and consistency in pursuing goals despite setbacks. Unlike resilience and hardiness, grit emphasizes constancy rather than adaptability. It involves sticking to the same goals, heading down the same path, and maintaining effort over time, even when faced with challenges.
Comparing Hardiness and Resilience
While hardiness shares similarities with resilience, it is just one aspect of the broader concept. The three attitudes of hardiness are captured by three components of the Neurozone Resilience Index (NRI):
-
Active Coping: Proactively addressing problems you see coming. This is similar to the commitment aspect of hardiness.
-
Tenacity: Feeling psychologically equipped to handle life's challenges. This resembles the challenge aspect of hardiness.
- A low degree of Learned Helplessness: Feeling in control of your environment and that things are in your hands. This reflects the control aspect of hardiness.
However, resilience encompasses more than just these elements. It also includes trait mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal, mastery motivation, optimism, and a sense of meaning - to name a few.
Comparing Hardiness and Grit
Hardiness involves accepting difficulty, persisting despite it, and directing your efforts in the most productive ways. Grit, on the other hand, only involves persisting despite difficulties. Gritty people may be able to carry on despite setbacks, but they may not be able to accept those setbacks with grace or use their energy most productively, especially if it differs from their predetermined course of action.
Comparing Grit and Resilience
The relationship between resilience and grit is complex. It depends on the context. Grit can enhance resilience in situations where consistent effort leads to success. For example, athletes training for the Olympics may benefit from being gritty (so long as their health isn’t compromised), as perseverance helps them overcome limitations and achieve their goals.
However, resilience doesn’t always mean persevering on the path you begin with. If your goals become unattainable, a resilient response will be changing course – or even changing your goals. Otherwise, if you persist in reaching something unattainable, you will dig yourself into an even deeper hole. Grit can decrease resilience in situations where you need to be flexible.
Standardized tests are a good example. They only award correct answers, not effort or time spent on the questions. If you are gritty, you will stay working (and stumped) on a very difficult question and won’t have time to answer the rest of the test. But if you are resilient, you will notice the dead-end, forfeit that question’s points, and continue with the rest of the test - increasing your chances of a better overall grade.
Grit, Resilience, and Performance Outcomes
The impact of grit versus resilience on performance can vary depending on the context. A recent study examined how these traits influenced retention among US undergraduates with a history of academic probation. It found that resilience, not grit, predicted retention for students facing significant setbacks. This makes sense because resilience allows us to accept setbacks and try new approaches, whereas grit may not offer this flexibility.
Another researcher observed that policymakers sometimes mistake resilience for grit when designing systems by aiming to make them resistant to change. Contrary to the policymakers’ aims, this approach reduces resilience since it prioritizes constancy over adaptability. True resilience involves being open to change and adjusting in response to stress or disturbance.
Summary and Conclusion
Grit, hardiness, and resilience are terms often used interchangeably, but they mean different things. Resilience is the ability to adapt and grow from challenges, involving flexibility and learning. Hardiness is an aspect of resilience that includes feeling in control, staying proactive, and viewing challenges as opportunities. Grit focuses on sticking to long-term goals with determination, emphasizing persistence over change.
Understanding these differences is crucial for effectively addressing mental health and personal development. Resilience provides a broad and adaptable approach to overcoming challenges. Grit offers the perseverance to keep going, which can sometimes be helpful but sometimes not, as it limits flexibility.
In conclusion, building resilience, which includes the strengths of hardiness and adaptability, is the key to better mental health and personal growth. While grit and hardiness help you handle stress, resilience offers a more comprehensive way to thrive in difficult situations. Recognizing and developing resilient qualities can lead to better outcomes for individuals and organizations alike.