The development of grit and growth mindset in Chinese children

In a recent longitudinal study of U.S. adolescents, grit predicted rank-order increases in growth mindset and, to a lesser degree, growth mindset predicted rank-order increases in grit. The current investigation replicated and extended these findings in a younger non-Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (non-WEIRD) population. Two large samples totaling more than 5000 elementary school children in China completed self-report questionnaires assessing grit and growth mindset five times over 2 years. As in Park et al. (2020, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 198, 1048892020), we found reciprocal relations between grit and growth mindset. Grit systematically predicted rank-order increases in growth mindset at each subsequent 6-month interval. Growth mindset also predicted small rank-order increases in grit over the same period. These findings suggest that, over time, behavior may exert as much an influence on beliefs as the reverse—a dynamic possibly observable as early as in elementary school and not just in WEIRD cultures.