Personality, academic majors and performance: Revealing complex patterns

Abstract

Personality-performance research typically uses samples of psychology students without questioning their representativeness. The present article reports two studies challenging this practice. Study 1: Group differences in the Big Five personality traits were explored between students (N = 1,067) in different academic majors (medicine, psychology, law, economics, political science, science, and arts/humanities) who were tested immediately after university enrolment. Study 2:Six and a half years later the students' academic records were obtained, and predictive validity of the Big Five personality traits and their subordinate facets was examined in the various academic majors in relation to Grade Point Average (GPA).Significant group differences in all Big Five personality traits were found between students in different academic majors. Also, variability in predictive validity of the Big Five personality traits and facets was found between different academic majors;

Creativity as a Factor in Persistence and Academic Achievement of Engineering Undergraduates

“…Hall et al () found that in addition to SAT math, high school GPA, and a math placement score, the only significant personality trait to predict persistence of engineering students was Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness also predicts academic achievement in college (O'Connor & Paunonen, ), and this effect has been found to be strongest among science majors (Vedel, Thomsen, & Larsen, ).…”

“…The strength of the American education system is often said to be our encouragement of creativity (Provasnik et al, 2012). Creativity has been at the forefront of the definition of "genius" -a person who can revolutionize industries, stimulate college (O'Connor & Paunonen, 2007), and this effect has been found to be strongest among science majors (Vedel, Thomsen, & Larsen, 2015).…”

Effects of Psychological and Demographic Factors on Academic Performance

“…According to the results of studies examining the relationship between the academic performance and the personality traits of students studying in different academic departments of universities (Vedel et al 2015), psychology and arts/humanities students had high scores in terms of agreeableness and neuroticism, while economics students had low scores in these two dimensions. Psychology and arts/humanities students had low scores in the conscientiousness dimension.…”

Examining the relations between subjective social class, academics, and well-being in first-generation college student veterans

“…This author expected social class to play a larger role in students' academic performance due to the associated capital people have and barriers people encounter based on their subjective social class. However, researchers have found that a significant percentage of academic performance is accounted for by standardized test scores, high school GPA, and non-cognitive factors such as conscientiousness (Aguinis, Culpepper, & Pierce, 2016;Vedel, Thomsen, & Larsen, 2015), which were not measured here. As not all of the variance in GPA, university investment, and subjective wellbeing were accounted for, the amounts explained in this study are addressed below.…”

“…Fourth, while the current models account for statistically significant variance in each outcome, the majority of variance in each model was left unexplained (i.e., SWB: 61%; UIOS: 82%, and GPA: 83%). Research into predictors of college performance have found that high school GPA, standardized test scores, and personality characteristics are significant predictors of college GPA (Aguinis et al, 2016;Vedel et al, 2015). These variables were not included in this study as the intention was to focus on subjective social class, and including measures to account for these others variables was not feasible due to participant time constraints and financial limitations.…”