Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025;70(3):201-223.
doi: 10.1007/s11166-025-09456-8. Epub 2025 Jun 17.

Grit, discounting, & time inconsistency

Christian König-Kersting  1 , Stefan T Trautmann  2   3
Affiliations

Grit, discounting, & time inconsistency

Christian König-Kersting et al. J Risk Uncertain. 2025.

Abstract

We study the association of the perseverance of effort and the consistency of interests components of the psychological measure of grit with economic measures of impatience and time inconsistency in the general population. We find that impatience is associated with grit through the perseverance of effort component. No association of time inconsistency with grit is found. Predicting participants' financial and health outcomes and behaviors, we find that impatience and grit are predictive for both outcomes, but this is not the case for time inconsistency. Our findings suggest that it can be beneficial for empirical studies of intertemporal decisions to include economic impatience and psychological grit measures.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11166-025-09456-8.

Keywords: Decreasing impatience; Grit; Health; Household finance; Time inconsistency; Time preferences.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsThe authors declare not to have any competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
5-week, coarse choice list. This example shows switching after week 10 on the coarse list
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
5-week, fine choice list, with switch after 10 weeks. This example shows the zoomed-in choice list based on switching from B to A after week 10 on the coarse choice list (5-week) shown in Fig. 1. The first and the last line correspond to the lines selected in the coarse choice list and were disabled, such that participants could only refine, but not change their switching point
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Alan, S., Boneva, T., & Ertac, S. (2019). Ever failed, try again, succeed better: Results from a randomized educational intervention on grit. The Quarterly Journal of Economics,134(3), 1121–1162.
    1. Alaoui, L., & Fons-Rosen, C. (2021). Know when to fold’em: The flip side of grit. European Economic Review,136, 103736.
    1. Angerer, S., Bolvashenkova, J., Glätzle-Rützler, D., Lergetporer, P., & Sutter, M. (2023). Children’s patience and school-track choices several years later: Linking experimental and field data. Journal of Public Economics,220, 104837.
    1. Arco-Tirado, J. L., Bojica, A., Fernández-Martín, F., & Hoyle, R. H. (2019). Grit as predictor of entrepreneurship and self-employment in Spain. Frontiers in Psychology,10, 389. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Augenblick, N., Niederle, M., & Sprenger, C. (2015). Working over time: Dynamic inconsistency in real effort tasks. The Quarterly Journal of Economics,130(3), 1067–1115.

LinkOut - more resources