In plain language
Two skills matter for pursuing life goals: tenacity (sticking with goals despite obstacles) and flexibility (adjusting your goals and preferences when circumstances change). Both sound valuable — but what happens when a person is high in both at once? One theory says the two complement each other; another says they create a "regulatory dilemma," pulling a person in opposite directions between persisting and letting go. Little research had examined this in school students.
This study analyzed data from 10,957 German high school students in the National Educational Panel Study, using a combination of machine-learning-based psychometrics and latent structural equation modeling (which corrects for measurement error). The researchers tested how tenacity, flexibility, and their combination related to students' life satisfaction and their performance on objective tests of academic competencies.
Each tendency on its own was helpful: both tenacity and flexibility were positively associated with life satisfaction, and flexibility was especially beneficial for students low in tenacity. But the combination told a different story — the interaction of tenacity and flexibility was negatively associated with both life satisfaction and test performance, consistent with the regulatory-dilemma theory that the two tendencies can work against each other. The practical implication is that interventions may do best by building on each student's existing strength — tenacity or flexibility — rather than pushing everyone to maximize both at once.
Key findings
- Both tenacity and flexibility had statistically significant positive associations with students' life satisfaction.
- The interaction of tenacity and flexibility was negatively associated with both life satisfaction and achievement on competencies tests.
- Having high levels of both tendencies showed no benefit for life satisfaction and appeared counterproductive for test achievement — supporting the regulatory-dilemma hypothesis.
- Flexibility was positively associated with life satisfaction especially among students who scored low in tenacity, suggesting it helps those who find it hard to persist.
- Tenacity and flexibility were positively associated with past grades in German and mathematics and with indicators of academic involvement, so each is generally beneficial on its own.
- The study drew on a large national sample (N = 10,957) and found that the standard 10-item tenacity/flexibility measure fit poorly, prompting machine-learning-based refinement of the measurement model.
How to cite
APA
Sahdra, B. K., Ciarrochi, J., Basarkod, G., Dicke, T., Guo, J., Parker, P. D., & Marsh, H. W. (2022). High school students' tenacity and flexibility in goal pursuit linked to life satisfaction and achievement on competencies tests. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(3), 622–636. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000667
BibTeX
@article{sahdra2022high,
title = {High School Students' Tenacity and Flexibility in Goal Pursuit Linked to Life Satisfaction and Achievement on Competencies Tests},
author = {Sahdra, Baljinder K. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Basarkod, Geetanjali and Dicke, Theresa and Guo, Jiesi and Parker, Philip D. and Marsh, Herbert W.},
journal = {Journal of Educational Psychology},
volume = {114},
number = {3},
pages = {622--636},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1037/edu0000667}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.