{"id":17179,"date":"2026-09-29T22:40:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T05:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17179"},"modified":"2026-08-15T23:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T06:51:16","slug":"self-discipline-predicted-final-grades-about-twice-as-strongly-as-iq-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17179","title":{"rendered":"Self-discipline predicted final grades about twice as strongly as IQ did"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman studied 140 eighth graders and published <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this study in Psychological Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Self-discipline, measured months before the school year ended through self-report, parent report, teacher report, and a task in which students chose between a smaller reward now or a larger one later, predicted final grades, school attendance, and selection into a competitive high school programme the following spring. A replication with 164 more students added a behavioural delay-of-gratification test and a group IQ test. Self-discipline accounted for more than twice the variance in final grades that IQ did, and the effect held even after controlling for the students\u2019 grades from earlier in the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/siliconcanals.com\/g-in-a-2005-study-of-140-eighth-graders-self-discipline-measured-months-in-advance-predicted-final-grades-about-twice-as-strongly-as-iq-did-one-clue-to-why-comfort-and-long-term-performance-often-pull\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/siliconcanals.com\/g-in-a-2005-study-of-140-eighth-graders-self-discipline-measured-months-in-advance-predicted-final-grades-about-twice-as-strongly-as-iq-did-one-clue-to-why-comfort-and-long-term-performance-often-pull\/\">It&#8217;s a very interesting read<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman studied 140 eighth graders and published this study in Psychological Science. Self-discipline, measured months before the school year ended through self-report, parent report, teacher report, and a task in which students chose between a smaller reward now or a larger one later, predicted final grades, school attendance, and selection into a competitive high school programme the following spring. A replication with 164 more students added a behavioural delay-of-gratification test and a group IQ test&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17179\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-4t5","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17180,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17179\/revisions\/17180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}