In this study, we investigate whether Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Risk Preference relate to student performance in higher education. We employ anchoring vignettes to correct for heterogeneous scale use in these non-cognitive skills. Our data are gathered among first-year students at a Dutch university. The results show that Conscientiousness is positively related to student performance, but the estimates are strongly biased upward if we use the uncorrected variables. We do not find significant relationships for Emotional Stability but find that the point estimates are larger when using the uncorrected variables. Measured Risk Preference is negatively related to student performance, yet this is fully explained by heterogeneous scale use. These results indicate the importance of using more objective measurements of personality traits.

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1 Chronic stress, i.e. exposure to stress over longer periods of time, is detrimental to physiological and psychological health, contributing to cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus and mental disorders (see e.g. Cohen et al., 2007;McEwen, 2008). In Europe, for example, the cost of mental health disorders is estimated at EUR 240 billion per year (EU-OSHA, 2013). These figures do not take into account additional individual costs of stress due to reduced quality of life and its burden on caretakers and families. In addition, stress arguably affects the quality of economic decision-making (Mani