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Mental toughness is a measure of individual psychological resilience and confidence that may predict success in sport, education, and in the workplace. The concept emerged in the context of sports training and sports psychology, as one of a set of attributes that allow a person to become a better athlete and able to cope with difficult training and difficult competitive situations and emerge without losing confidence. The term has been used by coaches, sport psychologists, sports commentators, and business leaders.
Mental toughness shares key characteristics with grit. Additional synonyms might include resilience, determined, strong-willed, and stalwart. A person who has the qualities of mental toughness might accept challenges as they arise aiding them to achieve their goals whether that be in sports, academics, or in their professions.
Scientific research has attempted a formal definition of mental toughness as a psychological construct with clear measurement criteria, which would allow robust analyses and comparisons to be made.
In particular, three research teams produced both a definition and a construct definition for mental toughness: being able to push past failures or blockades by remaining positive and competitive. This involves training the mind to be ready for challenges.
These same researchers published a second paper which provided four dimensions (categories) for mental toughness attributes: a general dimension of a performer's attitude or mindset (specifically, the performer's focus and self-belief), and three time-specific dimensions: training, competition, and post-competition. These time-specific dimensions contain attributes of mental toughness (such as handling pressure, handling failure, and pushing yourself to your physical limit in training) that pertain to their use at those times.
Although this definition was produced through work with Australian footballers, it has been generalized to other sports, including cricket and soccer. This definition conceives mental toughness as having reactive and proactive qualities; players can use mental toughness attributes to help endure and perform well during adverse situations, but can also employ other attributes of mental toughness when the game is going well, to keep them playing at their best.
Sport-specific studies of mental toughness have been conducted in cricket, soccer, gymnastics, and Australian football. These studies have not employed a common framework, although many have used the definition of mental toughness provided by either the Jones et al. study or the Gucciardi et al. study.
Many sports-focused studies employed the Clough model of mental toughness. They use samples of athletes to investigate a possible link between toughness, coping, emotional reactivity, psychological skills, and performance.
One of the few published studies that takes mental toughness out of the sporting domain is based on the 4 'C's model. This study showed that senior managers are tougher than their junior colleagues. Clough and his team are working in a number of areas outside of sport—education, health, social, and occupational—to explore the relevance of mental toughness in these areas.
In 2019, a study using a personality assessment identified six personality traits of top NCAA Division 1 and professional athletes that define mental toughness. This study also highlighted that the traits that make up mental toughness and that predict athletic success are some of the same traits seen in the most successful sales professionals.
In April 2020, researchers found that top shared the ability to cope with stressors as well as Olympic Games.
Mental toughness can also be found in the workplace. It has been found that when those in positions of influence instill mental toughness in their team members, those team members are more productive, take less sick leave, and work better together when collaboration arises.
Horsburgh et al. demonstrated that genetic and non-shared environmental factors contribute to the development of mental toughness (as measured by questionnaire), and that mental toughness behaves "in the same manner as virtually every personality trait that has ever been investigated in behavioural genetic study". In establishing significant relationships with the big five personality factors of Costa and McCrae (1992), these researchers have also provided evidence to support Clough et al.’s conceptualization of mental toughness. While embracing the importance of genetics, Clough acknowledges that mental toughness can be developed.
Additionally, it has been found that employees with higher levels of mental toughness may experience lower levels of stress than their colleagues. Further, lower stress levels and higher abilities to cope can lead to increases in job performance. Individuals in the workplace may become proficient if the skill of being mentally tough is taught and reiterated.
Mental toughness has led to better performance among employees. One trait of mental toughness is the tendency for improved performance on task-oriented goals. Another trait of high mental toughness is it leads to achievement goal making, providing individuals with a state of mind to go above and beyond at work. Finally, individuals equipped with mental toughness are better suited to handle stress at work.
Mental toughness invokes motivation and drive in goal achieving. It helps with problem solving abilities and supports personal hope. Additionally higher mental toughness can give a better desire for learning, boost confidence, and resilience. Resilience in adversity can foster competitiveness in the workplace.
Research done by Turkington et al. studied mental health and perceived stress. It was found that perceived in mental health workers was related to low mental toughness. The research suggests that increasing mental toughness is needed to combat high stress.
One of these studies was conducted by Smith et al. who looked at active-duty Airman's decreased suicidal rates in relation to those who had a support group and mental toughness. Their efforts to scale mental toughness came from the Mental Toughness Psychological Skills Profile (MTPSP; Asken 2005). They found that there could be a link between suicidal ideations decreasing when social groups were present, which those social groups helped facilitate mental toughness and self-confidence.
In an effort to better understand how to test for mental toughness Arthur et al. developed and tested for a scale in hopes to better understand and define mental toughness through a study with military recruits, the scale is known as the Military Training Mental Toughness Inventory (MTMTI). Over the span of three studies, Fitzwater et al. claim it to have proper psychometric properties, good reliability (tested through test-retest methods) concurrent validity and could be used as a decent predictor of performance.
On average, mentally tough people deal with academic anxiety more positively, by using coping mechanisms rather than avoidance techniques. Mental toughness acts as a mediator between academic anxiety and academic avoidance, which allows individuals to be more successful in academic endeavors. Due to mental toughness being a state of mind, it can be improved when practiced.
Like Grit, resilience is often used interchangeably with mental toughness. It has a similar meaning, but once again, they are not the same. Stock states that mental toughness must be paired with resilience, but resilience can exist without mental toughness. In academics, mental toughness can be measured through confidence and positive attitudes during difficulties. Men usually report higher Mental toughness than women, but recent evidence suggests that mental toughness may be expressed differently between genders. Especially in an academic environment. Maintaining mental toughness and a feeling of control is correlated with higher academic performance in both men and women.
The term resilience is often incorrectly used interchangeably with mental toughness, though researchers have found the two constructs are positively associated with one another. However, psychologists define resilience as a positive adaptive process of coping with stress and adversity, as opposed to a collection of psychological attributes or personality traits.
Hardiness has been suggested as a similar construct to mental toughness. Hardiness has typically been constructed as a stable Trait theory. This differs from the conceptions of mental toughness offered by both Jones et al. and Gucciardi et al. Those authors conceive of mental toughness as unstable, arising in development, fluctuating over time, and varying for an individual performer between different sport and life scenarios.
This definitional dilemma plagues the use of the term mental toughness. In addition, if mental toughness exists as a valid construct it may on occasion be maladaptive. Evidence to support this contention is derived from a study of overtraining behaviors and mental toughness. The author reported: "The results suggest that some attributes of MT may relate to increased ability to recover whereas other attributes are associated with lower recovery ... Arguably mental toughness is more closely linked with goal fixedness rather than adaptability and a flexible mindset, attributes which are central to resilience."
The MTQ48 questionnaire has demonstrable criterion-related, construct, and content validity. Reliability has been assessed by numerous independent researchers and it has demonstrable internal consistency and test-retest reliability.{ All component scales exceed 0.70 and the overall measure has a reliability in excess of 0.90.Specifically for self-efficacy results show r = .68, p < .01. While this is on the higher end, (.7) tends to be the standard minimum for research purposes. Nevertheless, both the construct validity and the psychometric properties of this test have been questioned.
Several other instruments purport to measure mental toughness, but research has called their validity into question. For example, the Performance Profile Inventory (PPI) developed by Jim Loehr used seven subscales to compute a mental toughness score. The Mental Toughness Inventory (MTI) developed by Middleton et al. measures mental toughness using twelve subscales and appears to show strong theoretical evidence for its formation. However, construct validation has only been performed with a narrow sample of athletes, leaving its psychometric properties up for debate.
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