In a post on "how to style casual blazers," Bridgette suggests that a solid-and-white patterned blazer can be worn with any colors. She shows it here with purple and green.
 |
| From bridgetteraes.com |
I decided to use this approach with my kind of overwhelming striped/polka dot blazer.
Purple short-sleeved T (Target), $3.50/wear
White skirt (Walmart), $6.00/wear
Black and white striped/polka dot blazer (thrifted, Jessica London), $5.00/wear
Gold flats (Nordstrom), $2.50/wear
Turtle pendant (Target), $5.00/wear
Outfit total: $22.00/wear
That's all well and good. But let's face it, the turtle makes the look.
I do not have a turtle photo from our national wildlife refuge trip this weekend to share (I didn't see any turtles), but will you accept a Great Egret taking flight from a pond? (I love the dangling feet.)
In other news...Tam sent this article from Slate that is a review of Angela Duckworth's new self-help book about grit / criticism of the grit concept. Here are some semi-random thoughts in response.
I do have some points of agreement with the author. Grit is a classic "old wine/new bottles" phenomenon--i.e., an old concept (or variation on a familiar concept) that is repackaged with a new name. And I do agree that restriction of range is a big issue when trying to extrapolate the results of some of the seminal Grit-is-Great studies to different settings. I mean, I think the West Point example is an interesting case--grit did do something that the other measures couldn't do: distinguish between those who succeeded and those who failed at that specific challenge, surviving the hellish weeks of Beast Barracks. But that doesn't mean that it is the greatest predictor of who succeeds in the program, with its varied demands, overall. And there is a subtle difference, I think, between developing a measure that predicts an outcome and "explaining how something happens" with a level of conceptual depth--a distinction that gets lost with this example, though the rampant empiricism of personality psychology often does not agree with my position on this. I do think that the (understandable) desire to make one's favorite construct/measure the Key to Everything has taken Duckworth down a wrong road here.
The article talks a lot about applications to education because Duckworth appears to have identified this as an important place for grit work. However, from what I've read, grit is already fading from popularity in the K-12 education scene (albeit from a ridiculous height in certain charter school systems).
Regarding the value of grit, I think that...well, let's go with conscientiousness rather than grit because it's got a much stronger empirical basis. The main effect of high conscientiousness on positive outcomes is very strong. It is actually kind of difficult to demonstrate situations in which high conscientiousness is a bad thing. I mean obviously anyone can come up with specific examples of people like Tam's grad school friend who is highly conscientious and struggling in grad school (and I'm not sure I would characterize her problems as stemming from high conscientiousness exactly) and think of situations in which people "should" give up or whatever, but my sense is that the literature on "when is high conscientiousness bad" is relatively small. Demonstrating that high conscientiousness really hurts you in identifiable situations is tough to do in a rigorous way. And I say this as a social psychologist by training and temperament who has a basic level of disdain for my sister field of personality psychology :)
Don't get me wrong--researchers absolutely have shown how task characteristics, feedback characteristics, etc., can cause worse outcomes for those with high conscientiousness. That is, after all, what research psychologists do--find something that has a strong main effect and then find the situations in which the opposite is true. It's also possible that the relationship between conscientiousness and positive outcomes is curvilinear--that higher conscientiousness leads to better outcomes until the conscientiousness level is super-extremely high (like, maybe in the obsessive-compulsive range), at which point the relationship turns negative. (The research I've seen on this issue, taken from non-clinical participant samples, has not borne that out, but I bet somebody somewhere has found or is working on finding the right sample to show this.) But if you were in the position of getting to choose whether your child (for example) were going to be high (though possibly not crazy-high) or low in conscientiousness, the research indicates that high conscientiousness is the way to go.
This reminds me of something I read in a paper about self-control in grad school, which I think is applicable here: "When assessing the costs and benefits of self-control, it is important to note that self-control is ultimately just a tool, and it can be used for bad purposes just as easily as for good, praiseworthy ones. Given that most individuals' goals seem to align with general social norms, self-control is most often used for positive ends for the self and society" (Baumeister and Alquist, 2009). When people use self-control/conscientiousness/grit/etc. to further goals that are not in their interests, is that the fault of conscientiousness or a poor selection of goals/priorities? It's a hell of a tool, but you still need to use it wisely.
Anyway, back to my annoyance with the article. The author hit one of my pet peeves with this whole "but all this psychology is just common sense!" aspect. They would have been better served sticking to the demonstrable short-comings of the construct, research, etc., than focusing on this. I mean, you're reviewing a fucking SELF HELP BOOK! The idea that there is a lot of "common sense" in it is pretty much a given, right?
And of course, at the end the author is all, Well I have really low grit and I'm awesome and I'm great at my job! So yeah, there is definitely some motivated cognition going on there. Which is how people get through the day but still, I don't think this was the right person to write this article (to the extent that it is intended to be an objective analysis and not just a fun why-I-hate-this-thing review--it seems clearly intended to be the first type and would be an utter failure as the second because it isn't fun at all). From the beginning of the article, there seemed a weird taking-this-personally vibe that made a lot more sense when I got to the personal reveal at the end.
7 comments:
One thought I had is that high conscientiousness can be harmful to you if you are being tortured for information.
And of course your grit and conscientiousness can be bad for others if you are a suicide bomber or kamikazi pilot, etc. So your point about being a tool that can be used for good or evil is well-taken.
Ugh, I don't feel like reading that article, though.
Debbie, I don't blame you for not wanting to read it. I found it a bit of a slog myself. It's not an assigned reading and won't be on the test ;)
Whew, thanks!
I think with the reveal at the end, the writer of that article might be confusing grit with what I see as more of a fox vs. hedgehog thing (popularized recently-ish by that popular business book Good to Great that was all the rage in the company I worked for at the time). The gist is that hedgehogs know one thing (digging, I guess?) and work on it relentlessly (this is how your company should be, says Good to Great) while foxes are more diverse and scattered. I myself am definitely a fox and also low in conscientiousness (though my conscientiousness has definitely increased over time, and I hope and expect it will continue to do so). I think being a fox might be helpful for journalists, but high conscientiousness shouldn't be confused with a tendency to perseverate.
Tam, huh, I wasn't familiar with the fox/hedgehog thing but your idea is interesting. If I recall correctly, perseverance (or persistence) is a major component of the grit construct. Really, I'm not sure that a hedgehog is not a classically "gritty" creature, one with a consistent, relentless focus on doing their thing. Well, at least according to the grit definition I'm familiar with Duckworth using in the past. Perhaps it's been more my error in thinking/talking about conscientiousness and grit too interchangeably. But a lot of the literature (that I'm familiar with) does link persistence at achievement activities with high conscientiousness also. So yeah, I don't know. There are too many similar/overlapping concepts here. But I definitely am a fan of animal analogies. That I do know.
I guess what I mean is, grit or conscientiousness may allow one to persevere, but you can be conscientious without perseverating in the sense of persisting well past the time when you should stop. (I'm drawing a distinction between persevering and perseverating.) You can have diverse talents and interests and usefully flit from topic to topic (as a journalist, for instance) while also being conscientious. At least, I imagine so.
Ah, I see your point now. And I absolutely agree.
Post a Comment