Metatraits of the successful university-level students

Abstract

As higher education acquisition is expected in all the civilised countries of the world not only to innovate the students’ knowledge base but also to produce a humanising effect on their personalities, the aim of this study was to identify the key dispositional and dynamic metatraits of the successful university-level students potentially predictive of the humanising effect of education. Those metatraits were singled out with reference to the assumptions that they should denote how the individual thinks, feels and acts in the course of pursuing major life tasks suggested by the prominent personality psychology specialist J. B. Campbell. Using the quasi-experiment method, we have confirmed on a representative sample comprising big Ukrainian University students the existence of statistically significant differences in the above-mentioned metatraits of the more and less successful students. The findings allow to recommend accounting for the metatraits in the system of the personality selection and the assessment of the quality of education.
 
 Keywords: Metatrait, metacognitive competence, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy beliefs, coping adequacy, positive values.