Twenty years ago, I partnered with Angela Duckworth to study whether grit — the passionate pursuit of long-term goals — is linked to West Point cadet candidates’ success in completing Cadet Basic Training (CBT). Cadet candidates must complete this challenging training before being accepted into West Point’s Corps of Cadets and beginning their four-year regimen of academic, physical, and leadership training that results in their eventual awarding of a Bachelor of Science degree and a commission as a U.S. Army officer. Our research findings, published in 2007, revealed that grit was strongly linked to CBT retention.[i]

As a former U.S. Air Force officer, the link between grit and success in military training was not surprising. My observation had been that non-cognitive attributes, such as grit, are more important in military training than intelligence or other cognitive attributes. The ability to stick with the training and not give up, no matter how challenging and at times unpleasant, mattered more than IQ. Our 2007 study, then, simply corroborated my intuitive sense of what it takes to excel in such tasks.

I also held to the belief — based on experiences and not empirical data — that military training strengthens non-cognitive attributes. Our findings with West Point cadet candidates reinforced this view and led me to design a study to systematically evaluate the impact of CBT on grit and psychological hardiness (another non-cognitive attribute that has been studied extensively among West Point cadets).[ii] In addition, we were interested to learn if another set of........

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