Do Boys Have More Grit Than Girls? Large New Study Offers Complicated Answer

Teenage boys are often seen as especially lazy. A large Norwegian study of middle schoolers turns that assumption on its head. Across every measure, boys scored higher on anything related to motivation. Girls, on the other hand, did better when it came to compassion.

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology surveyed 7,260 eighth-grade students across 183 schools, measuring a wide range of traits tied to resilience and school success: passion for activities, grit (the ability to stick with goals over time), growth mindset, self-belief, compassion, courage, school safety, and overall wellbeing. Boys scored higher on nearly every measure. But girls showed something boys did not: a more tightly connected motivational system, one where self-belief, perseverance, and mindset all reinforce each other more powerfully.

That pattern could have real consequences for how schools design support programs. A gap in reported motivation does not necessarily mean a gap in potential, and for girls, even modest gains in confidence may set off a broader chain reaction.

Boys Report Higher Levels Of Confidence, Grit, School Safety

Across the full sample, boys outscored girls on passion, grit, growth mindset, self-confidence, self-compassion, courage, school wellbeing, and reported safety at school. The differences were statistically significant across the board, though most were modest in size. The biggest gap ran in the opposite direction: girls sc

ored substantially higher than boys on compassion for others.

Boys reported feeling safer in class and during recess, and said they enjoyed school more. Girls, meanwhile, described receiving more compassion from peers and adults, yet rated their own sense of safety and wellbeing lower than boys did.

Published in Frontiers in Education, one finding stood out: flourishing, a broader measure of psychological wellbeing that includes things like a sense of purpose, satisfying relationships, and personal growth, showed no meaningful gender difference at all. Boys and girls reported nearly identical scores. That result was unexpected given the other gaps, and researchers say it points to the need for more age-specific research that separates middle school from high school students, where those patterns may diverge.

The Girls’ Motivational Paradox: Lower Scores, Stronger Connections

Despite scoring lower on grit, growth mindset, and self-confidence individually, girls showed stronger links between those traits. A girl who reported a strong growth mindset was more likely to also report higher grit and self-confidence than a boy with the same mindset score. That interdependence, which researchers describe as a more cohesive motivational profile, suggests girls may draw more benefit from any single motivational boost than boys do.

The authors note that girls in Norway consistently outperform boys academically, which seems to contradict lower scores on general motivation. Part of the explanation, they say, is that the study measured general motivation across all areas of life, not just school-specific drive. Other research has found that boys sometimes rate their abilities more highly than girls do, which may partly explain the confidence gap seen here: a pattern that appears across cultures without necessarily reflecting a true difference in capability.

Grit in this study also behaved differently by age than expected. Prior research in adults typically finds women score higher on grit than men. This study found the opposite in early adolescence (boys scored higher). Researchers speculate that girls may integrate grit more fully into their motivational framework as they mature, potentially explaining why adult patterns eventually flip.

Compassion Gaps: Why They Matter For Classroom Culture

Girls scored significantly higher on compassion for others, while boys scored higher on self-compassion. But for girls, received compassion was more tightly connected to their sense of school safety and wellbeing than it was for boys. In practical terms: feeling supported by peers and teachers matters more to girls’ sense of security at school.

For boys, the picture ran differently. Higher compassion for others in boys correlated more strongly with both receiving compassion back and having greater self-compassion. That suggests a potential feedback loop: boys who develop the habit of caring about others may see broader benefits to their own emotional health in return. The study’s authors argue this points toward compassion-based programming being especially valuable for adolescent boys, not just girls.

Girls also scored lower on courage, a finding the researchers link partly to lower self-confidence. Since courage and self-belief tracked closely together in the data, programs that build confidence in girls may indirectly strengthen their willingness to take risks and face fear, which itself has known links to reducing anxiety.

How The Study Was Conducted

Students were drawn from 183 secondary schools across Norway at the start of eighth grade in fall 2024. Participants were 12 to 14 years old, with an average age of just under 13. The final sample included 3,539 boys and 3,721 girls; 38 participants with missing gender data and 103 who identified outside the binary or preferred not to disclose were excluded from the gender comparison portion of the analysis.

All participants were enrolled in schools affiliated with MOT Norge, a nonprofit focused on youth resilience and wellbeing. The survey covered eleven psychological constructs using established scales adapted into Norwegian. Passion was measured using the Passion Scale developed by Sigmundsson and colleagues; grit was assessed with the Grit-S, an eight-item tool created by psychologist Angela Duckworth. Self-confidence was measured with the General Self-Efficacy Scale, growth mindset with a tool based on Carol Dweck’s theory, and courage with the Courage Measure for Children. Compassion was split across three separate scales covering compassion toward others, self-compassion, and compassion received from others. School wellbeing, school safety, and flourishing were measured with short validated scales, including the Flourishing Scale by Ed Diener.

Parental consent was obtained for all participants under 16. The survey was completed digitally during normal school hours, with no IP addresses recorded.

Bottom Line

Norwegian adolescents, both boys and girls, reported generally high levels of school safety and wellbeing compared to international benchmarks, a reassuring backdrop to the study’s more sobering findings. But data from national surveys show that wellbeing among Norwegian middle school girls has been declining for roughly a decade, and this study fits that pattern. Boys feeling safer and more motivated at school is not a story about boys thriving, it is also a story about girls being left with less of what they need to get there.

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