Associations Between the Big Five Personality Traits and a Medical School Admission Interview

Abstract

Introduction: Personality has became popular in medical student's selection. However, few research exists about the association between the big five personality traits and the existent medical school selection tools. Our aim was to study which personality traits were selected by a medical school admission interview. Material and Methods: One hundred ninety four graduate applicants that had applied to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto through the graduate entry approach, after ranked on previous achievement, were interviewed between the academic years of 2011 and 2013. From these, 181 (93.3%) answered to the NEO Five-Factor Inventory that assesses high order personality traits of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Admission interview corresponded to the second phase of the seriation process. Every applicant was interviewed and scored by three interviewers on seven dimensions asesssed by Lickert scale (1-10). Interview score was the sum of the dimensions. Linear mixed effects model and respective regression coefficients were used to estimate the association between personality traits from each interviewer's score. Final models were adjusted for gender, interviewers and previous achievement.Results: Openness to experience (Beta = 0.18: CI 95%: 0.05; 0.30) had the strongest association with interview score followed by the interaction effect between the extraversion and conscientiousness traits (Beta = 0.14; CI 95%: 0.02; 0.25). Also, applicants scored higher when their gender was opposite to the interviewers. Discussion: Previous achievement and interview score had no association. Conclusion: Our admission interview selected different personality traits when compared to other selection tools. Medical schools should be aware of the implications of the adopted selection tools on the admitted medical student's personality because it can help providing beneficial interventions.

Personality and achievement along medical training: Evidence from a cross-lagged analysis

“…This result corroborates studies that found that graduates may contribute to widen psychological diversity [ 31 ]. Still, it must be mentioned that these graduates are the same who had scored higher on the traits of openness to experience, extraversion and conscientiousness in their admission interview [ 8 ]. This fact reinforces that different medical selection tools call upon different personality traits among applicants [ 11 ].…”

“…The first phase ranked applicants based on their previous achievement. The highest achievers were eligible for the admission interview that aimed to pursue personal characteristics that go beyond academic success [ 8 ].…”

“…However, it cannot be assumed that those with high academic ability alone can be turned into competent physicians via medical training, as personal characteristics may need to be present from the beginning [ 7 ]. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of medical selection tools that aim to pursuit non-academic characteristics among the academically well-qualified applicants, such as interviews [ 8 ], mini-multiple-interviews (MMI) [ 9 ] or situational judgement tests[ 10 ]. Also, it has been shown how different medical selection tools can call upon different personality traits [ 8 , 11 ].…”

Identification and evaluation of the core elements of character education for medical students in Korea

“…In other words, Korean students are not adequately equipped with mutual respect, consideration, and honesty in human relations. Many medical schools try to select students with a good character by using personality inventories or interviews to inform admissions decisions [2,3]. Some Korean medical schools select students using academic achievement as the top priority.…”

The Relation Between Personality Traits and Violence Tendency in Nursing Students

“…The study by Ziapour and Kianipour conducted with nurses showed that the "openness to improvement" sub-dimension of nurses was the highest (Ziapour and Kianipour, 2015). On the other hand, the study by Lourinho et al conducted with faculty of medicine students showed also that the "openness to improvement" sub-dimension was the highest (Lourinho et al, 2016). In studies conducted in the literature with different student groups it is evident that the "openness to improvement" sub-dimension attained the highest score average.…”