Gritty people try harder: Grit and effort-related cardiac autonomic activity during an active coping challenge

• Grit predicts success in a wide range of real-world outcomes.
• An experiment examined how grit predicts ANS activity during mental effort.
• Grit’s facets—Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interest—diverged.
• Perseverance predicted faster PEP and higher RSA during the task.
• Consistency predicted lower PEP during the task.

Grit, a recently proposed personality trait associated with persistence for long-range goals, predicts achievement in a wide range of important life outcomes. Using motivational intensity theory, the present research examined the physiological underpinnings of grit during an active coping task. Forty young adults completed the Short Grit Scale and worked on a self-paced mental effort task. Effort-related autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity was assessed using impedance cardiography, which yielded measures of sympathetic activity (pre-ejection period; PEP) and parasympathetic activity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA). Multilevel models revealed that people high on the Perseverance of Effort subscale showed autonomic coactivation: both PEP and RSA became stronger during the task, reflecting higher activity of both ANS divisions. The Consistency of Interest subscale, in contrast, predicted only weaker sympathetic activity (slower PEP). Taken together, the findings illuminate autonomic processes associated with how “gritty” people pursue goals, and they suggest that more attention should be paid to the facets' distinct effects.