People differ greatly in their capacity to persist in the face of challenges. Despite significant research, relatively little is known about cognitive factors that might be involved in perseverance. Building upon human threat-management mechanism, we predicted that perseverant people would be characterized by reduced sensitivity (i.e., longer detection latency) to threat cues. Our data from 5,898 job applicants showed that highly perseverant individuals required more time to correctly identify anger in faces, regardless of stimulus type (dynamic or static computer-morphed faces). Such individual differences were not observed in response to other facial expressions (happiness, sadness), and the effect was independent of gender, dispositional anxiety, or conscientiousness. Discussions were centered on the potential role of threat sensitivity in effortful pursuit of goals.