Electrophysiological Prints of Grit

Abstract

While scientific interest in understanding the grit trait has grown exponentially in recent years, one important gap in the grit literature relates to its biological and neural substrate. In the present study, we adopted a hypotheses-driven approach in a large sample of young adults (N = 120) with diverse educational backgrounds and work experiences in order to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of grit both during rest and while performing a learning task. Additionally, we selected a measure of impulsiveness to better understand the neural similarities and differences between grit and related self-control constructs. Based on previous work that implicated the prefrontal cortex in grit, we hypothesized that high grit participants would have lower frontal theta/beta ratio (a broadly used index that reflects prefrontally-mediated top–down processes, which might indicate better control over subcortical information). Furthermore, we expected the perseverance of effort facet of grit to be linked to higher complexity during task engagement because previous research has shown complexity indexes (entropy and fractal dimension) to be linked to effort while performing cognitive tasks. Our results revealed that although there were no differences at rest as a function of grit, the participants with high grit and high consistency of interest scores exhibited lower frontal theta/beta ratios during the learning task. This pattern suggests that individual differences in grit might be more evident when top-down control processes are at work. Furthermore, there was a positive association between perseverance of effort and entropy at task, which might indicate more effort and engagement in the task. Finally, no association was found between the neural indexes (frontal theta/beta ratio, entropy, or fractal dimension) and impulsiveness, neither impulsiveness mediated between grit and brain measures. Finally, when controlling for impulsiveness and demographic variables (gender, age, education, and work experience) the effects at the facet level remained statistically significant. While there is still a long way to fully understand the neural mechanisms of grit, the present work constitutes a step toward unveiling the electrophysiological prints of grit.