In recent years, grit has drawn increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners. As an important noncognitive indicator, grit has been used to understand individual success and performance in various fields. However, past empirical research has shown inconsistent findings on the relationship between grit and academic achievement. This study aims to review and synthesize past empirical findings on the relationship between grit and academic achievement. Forty‐four relevant articles involving a total of 60,133 participants met the inclusion criteria and were synthesized in this meta‐analysis. Our findings suggest that (a) overall grit level and its two facets (consistency of interest and perseverance of effort) are positively associated with academic achievement; (b) the association between grit and academic achievement is moderated by grade level; and (c) perseverance of effort shows the largest effect size on students’ academic achievement when compared with overall grit level and consistency of interest.

This review examined the relations between grit and academic achievement based on a meta-analysis of 137 studies yielding 156 dependent samples (N = 285,331). Using the robust variance estimation, we found that the correlations of overall grit level with academic achievement were generally weak to moderate (weighted r = .19). The correlation of perseverance of effort to achievement (weighted r = .21) was stronger than that of consistency of interest (weighted r = .08). Adopting a cross-cultural perspective in reviewing these findings, we concluded that the associations between overall grit/2 facets and academic achievement did not differ across individualism-collectivism. We also investigated 7 other moderators, including grit measurement, types of achievement measures, publication type, educational levels, research design, study quality, and the female ratio of sampling in the grit-achievement relationship. After controlling for all proposed moderators, no significant moderators were found in the overall grit-achievement link or the consistency of interest-achievement link. There was a significantly stronger association between perseverance of effort and academic achievement in nonstandardized measures than in standardized measures. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Educational Impact and Implications StatementThis review contributes to the existing grit literature by providing further insights into the grit and academic achievement relationships by synthesizing 137 studies. The findings suggest that students' overall grit and its 2 grit facets demonstrated positive associations with academic achievement (.08 # rs # .21), regardless students' sociocultural backgrounds. Further moderator analyses showed that, after controlling for all proposed moderators, the association between perseverance of effort and academic achievement was stronger for nonstandardized academic achievement measures (i.e., GPA and school grade) than standardized measures (i.e., public exams). This review suggests that grit can facilitate academic achievement among student populations across cultures. Our findings improve our current understanding of how and when grit as a character strength is associated with academic achievement. These findings may be beneficial to schools that consistently deal with student noncognitive development and how this can be transferred to academic study.

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