A Theoretical Model for Grit in Pursuing Ambitious Ends
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Mar 4, 2025
Abstract
Ambition and risk-taking have been heralded as important ways for
marginalized communities to get out of cycles of poverty. As a result,
educational messaging often encourages individuals to strengthen their personal
resolve and develop characteristics such as discipline and grit to succeed in
ambitious ends. However, recent work in philosophy and sociology highlights
that this messaging often does more harm than good for students in these
situations. We study similar questions using a different epistemic approach and
in simple theoretical models -- we provide a quantitative model of
decision-making between stable and risky choices in the improving multi-armed
bandits framework. We use this model to first study how individuals'
"strategies" are affected by their level of grittiness and how this affects
their accrued rewards. Then, we study the impact of various interventions, such
as increasing grit or providing a financial safety net. Our investigation of
rational decision making involves two different formal models of rationality,
the competitive ratio between the accrued reward and the optimal reward and
Bayesian quantification of uncertainty.
