In Norwegian 8th-Grade Classrooms, Boys Score Higher on Motivation - But Girls Show Stronger Internal Connections

Self-report surveys of adolescent psychology are tricky instruments. They capture how young people perceive themselves - which matters - but those perceptions can diverge from actual behavior or capacity in ways that are hard to untangle. With that caveat stated upfront, a study of 7,260 Norwegian Year 8 students conducted by Vegard Renolen Litlabo at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology produces a set of gender differences worth examining carefully, because they point in directions that don't fit the familiar narratives about either boys or girls.

How the survey was structured

Students were asked to rate themselves across nine dimensions: passion, grit, growth mindset (belief that effort improves ability), self-efficacy (belief that one can succeed at a specific task), courage, school well-being, school safety, compassion (for others, for oneself, and received from others), and flourishing (fulfilment of one's potential).

The sample of 7,260 included slightly more girls than boys. Results were analyzed both for mean differences between groups and for correlations between the measured factors within each group - a distinction that turns out to be important.

Boys ahead on most measures, girls on compassion toward others

Boys reported significantly higher scores across most motivation-related dimensions: passion, grit, growth mindset, self-efficacy, courage, school well-being, school safety, and compassion toward themselves. The gender differences were generally small for most individual factors. One domain stood out as a clear exception: compassion for others, where girls scored substantially higher. Girls also reported receiving more compassion from others.

On flourishing - the dimension measuring how well students feel they are fulfilling their potential - there was no significant gender difference. Both groups reported similar levels of self-actualization, even as their profiles across the other dimensions diverged.

The more complicated picture: correlations within groups

Looking at individual factor averages tells one story. Looking at how those factors connect to each other within each group tells a different one. Among girls, the correlations between self-efficacy, grit, and growth mindset were stronger than among boys. Girls who believed they could succeed at something were more likely to also report having grit and believing in the value of effort - a tighter internal coherence in the motivational profile.

"Boys scored higher on all factors related to motivation. This is quite clear when we look at the factors individually. Girls, however, showed stronger correlations between self-efficacy, grit and growth mindset," Litlabo explained.

Girls were also more strongly affected by school safety. When they felt safe at school, their flourishing scores rose sharply and their self-reported compassion received from others increased. This suggests that the social environment of the school shapes girls' motivation more powerfully than it does boys, at least as measured here.

Boys' compassion for others was not simply absent; it appeared more conditional. Boys showed higher compassion toward others when they themselves received more compassion or showed greater self-compassion. Compassion for others seemed to follow from receiving it, rather than being an independently strong baseline trait.

What these patterns suggest for students and educators

The researchers draw practical implications from these patterns, though cautiously. Girls may particularly benefit from interventions targeting self-efficacy and self-compassion - helping them believe more concretely in their own abilities and treat themselves with the same consideration they extend to others. Boys may particularly benefit from developing compassion for others, with likely positive effects not just for the individuals but for the broader school environment.

These recommendations come from a self-report study with real limitations. The entire sample comes from Norwegian Year 8 students, making it unclear how well the findings generalize across cultures or age groups. Self-assessment of traits like grit or growth mindset may reflect students' ideas about these concepts as much as their actual experience of them. And cross-sectional data - a single snapshot of students at one point in time - cannot tell us how these patterns develop or whether they are stable.

The paper explicitly notes that more research tracking these patterns over time is needed, particularly to understand whether the gender gaps in individual motivation factors narrow, persist, or widen as students move through secondary school. The question of whether educational interventions targeting self-efficacy in girls or compassion in boys produce measurable outcomes is open and empirically important.