A meta-analysis of adult-rated child personality and academic performance in primary education

Mindfulness Through Storytelling for Mental Health of Primary School Children: Impact on Acceptability and Its Associations with Personality

Purpose

Acceptability of mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) in primary school settings seems to represent a critical factor influencing the intervention effects on children's mental health. This study aims at assessing the acceptability of an MBP delivered through the technique of storytelling, as well as identifying which participants' personality characteristics can influence it.

Participants and Methods

Italian children in grades 3-to-5 (n = 147, 47.6% girls) participated in a 24-session MBP, which included 225 minutes of formal mindfulness practices and was delivered by the pupils' school teachers. Children's personality traits were assessed with the junior Temperament and Character Inventory (jTCI), while their subjective experiences and acceptability of the program were investigated using a survey containing open-ended and closed-ended questions.

Results

Program acceptability was 2.9 ± 0.7 on a 0-4 scale. Higher jTCI scores of persistence, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence were related to higher ratings in liking the program, finding it useful and engaging themselves in it. Moreover, 57.8% of the children generalized the mindfulness practices in daily life and 93.9% of them declared they would recommend the program to their friends/parents. Five main themes emerged from children's answers on what they learned: "help for difficulties (emotional, mental, and physical)", "calm, relax, tranquility", "resilience, positiveness, personal growth", "self-exploration, interoception", and "attention, concentration, and here-and-now".

Conclusion

Program acceptability was generally higher than in similar programs in the literature, and children reported personal gains in various areas related to psychological well-being. The study also suggests which children's personality traits should be considered when proposing an MBP in order to improve its acceptability and utility.

Childhood personality and academic performance: A sibling fixed-effects study

OBJECTIVE

This study investigated the associations between personality traits at age 8 and academic performance between ages 10 and 14, controlling for family confounds.

BACKGROUND

Many studies have shown links between children's personality traits and their school performance. However, we lack evidence on whether these associations remain after genetic and environmental confounders are accounted for.

METHOD

Sibling data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) were used (n = 9701). First, we estimated the overall associations between Big Five personality traits and academic performance, including literacy, numeracy, and foreign language. Second, we added sibling fixed effects to remove unmeasured confounders shared by siblings as well as rating bias.

RESULTS

Openness to Experience (between-person β = 0.22 [95% CI: 0.21-0.24]) and Conscientiousness (between-person β = 0.18 [95% CI 0.16-0.20]) were most strongly related to educational performance. Agreeableness (between-person β = 0.06 [95% CI -0.08-0.04]) and Extraversion (between-person β = 0.02 [95% CI 0.00-0.04]) showed small associations with educational performance. Neuroticism had a moderate negative association (between-person β = -0.14 [95% CI -0.15-0.11]). All associations between personality and performance were robust to confounding: the within-family estimates from sibling fixed-effects models overlapped with the between-person effects. Finally, childhood personality was equally predictive of educational performance across ages and genders.

CONCLUSIONS

Although family background is influential for academic achievement, it does not confound associations with personality. Childhood personality traits reflect unbiased and consistent individual differences in educational potential.

Impact of personality on cadet academic and military performance within mediating role of self-efficacy

Background

The current operational military environment is changing, complex, unpredictable, and ambiguous. Due to such situations, soldiers are constantly forced to think about their values, norms, and roles that should be part of their profession. Consequently, they must first be educated and trained on how to behave in a particular operational military environment. Pursuing an officer's education at military academies is very difficult not only physically but also psychologically. Cadets are required to be prepared to lead in extreme environments upon graduation. Despite the fact that military tasks are technically complex, the individual operational activities of soldiers are gaining more and more strategic meaning. Therefore, the importance of selecting the process and military education programs of soldiers is increasingly stressed. Cognitive abilities and skills individually predict performance in academic and professional settings, but it is less clear how personality can influence performance. Therefore, this study focused on the explanation of the individual factors that affect the achievements of the cadets. Specifically, the objective of this study was to examine direct and mediated relationships between personality traits and the military and academic performance of cadets.

Methods

This study followed a quantitative method analysis. The research models were assessed using the structural equation modeling technique. Bootstrap was applied to evaluate a 95% level confidence interval on estimates with 5,000 bootstrap samples, and to evaluate direct and indirect effects. The analysis was based on a sample of 120 cadets from the Lithuanian Military Academy. The effects on military and academic performance were evaluated using the Self-Efficacy scale, the Big Five personality trait scale, academic performance was evaluated through academic grades and military performance was evaluated using instructor ratings.

Results

To support our hypotheses, it was found that self-efficacy has a mediating effect on the performance of cadets. Additionally, the traits of conscientiousness, openness to experience and extraversion were related to both military and academic performance. Furthermore, self-efficacy appeared as a partial mediator of the relationship between personality traits and cadet performance.

Conclusion

The findings of this study help clarify the relationship between the personality traits of the cadets and the military and academic performance. In addition, these results may be useful for the further development of military education and training, for the development of testing, and selection of military personnel.

The Trait of Extraversion as an Energy-Based Determinant of Entrepreneur’s Success—The Case of Poland

The fact that personality traits play an important role when it comes to predicting people’s entrepreneurial behavior is currently indisputable. However, so far, the majority of subject literature has focused on employee characteristics in developed countries. To address this gap, research was conducted, including 188 entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises (SME) and 21 highest-level employees in Poland—one of the countries with the most hostile and turbulent environment for entrepreneurial operations in the world. The five personality traits (Big Five) were evaluated using the 60-item scale. There were three objectives of this study: to identify the differences between entrepreneurs and the most effective, highest-level employees, in the context of personality trait intensities, to determine the level of specific trait(s) intensities (OCEAN) of an effective entrepreneur. Finally, to determine whether it is possible to construct a model based on BIG5 to estimate the probability of success as an entrepreneur. The research results imply there are significant differences between successful entrepreneurs and highly effective employees and their personality trait intensities, described in the BIG5 model. Moreover, it is possible to distinguish trait intensity ranges, determining the success as an entrepreneur. Finally, we constructed the empirically based model, which allows us to estimate the chances of an individual succeeding as an entrepreneur with only a 5% error rate. The main factor and common denominator of entrepreneurial effectiveness is the trait of extraversion. The findings of our study are particularly important for the renewable energy sector in Poland, as the last part of green energy implementing blockchain (e.g., the installation and maintenance of wind turbines and solar panels) is being undertaken, in vast majority, by independent contractors and SME owners (entrepreneurs).

Beyond Competencies: Associations between Personality and School Grades Are Largely Independent of Subject-Specific and General Cognitive Competencies

The Big Five personality traits are established predictors of school grades. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not yet well understood. Effects of personality on grades might arise because behavioral tendencies facilitate learning and increase subject-specific competencies. Alternatively, personality effects on grades might be independent of cognitive competencies and reflect otherwise valued behaviors or teachers’ grading practices. In the current study, we drew on large-scale data of 7th and 9th graders in Germany to explore the extent to which personality predicted grades even after accounting for competencies. Controlling for competencies and other key covariates, we cross-sectionally and longitudinally examined personality–grade associations across different school subjects, grade levels, and school types. Results indicate that the predictive power of personality is largely independent of subject-specific and general cognitive competencies. The largest effects emerged for conscientiousness. For openness, associations with grades partly overlapped with competencies, suggesting that openness may operate by fostering competencies. Overall, our results suggest that the associations between personality and grades unfold mostly independently of course mastery. This finding underlines the socioemotional value of personality in the classroom and encourages a more fine-grained view of the interplay between personality, competencies, classroom behavior, and grades.

Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills

Children’s noncognitive or socioemotional skills (e.g., persistence and self-control) are typically measured using surveys in which either children rate their own skills or adults rate the skills of children. For many purposes—including program evaluation and monitoring school systems—ratings are often collected from multiple perspectives about a single child (e.g., from both the child and an adult). Collecting data from multiple perspectives is costly, and there is limited evidence on the benefits of this approach. Using a longitudinal survey, this study compares children’s noncognitive skills as reported by themselves, their guardians, and their teachers. Although reports from all three types of respondents are correlated with each other, teacher reports have the highest internal consistency and are the most predictive of children’s later cognitive outcomes and behavior in school. The teacher reports add predictive power beyond baseline measures of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) for most outcomes in schools. Measures collected from children and guardians add minimal predictive power beyond the teacher reports.

Developing and Validating a Short-Form Questionnaire for the Assessment of Seven Facets of Conscientiousness in Large-Scale Assessments

Conscientiousness is the most important personality predictor of academic achievement. It consists of several lower order facets with differential relations to academic achievement. There is currently no short instrument assessing facets of conscientiousness in the educational context. Therefore, in the present multi-study report, we develop and validate a short-form questionnaire for the assessment of seven Conscientiousness facets, namely Industriousness, Perfectionism, Tidiness, Procrastination Refrainment, Control, Caution, and Task Planning. To this end, we examined multiple representative samples totaling N = 14,604 Grade 9 and 10 students from Luxembourg. The questionnaire was developed by adapting and shortening an existing scale using an exhaustive search algorithm. The algorithm was specified to select the best item combination based on model fit, reliability, and measurement invariance across the German and French language versions. The resulting instrument showed the expected factorial structure. The relations of the facets with personality constructs and academic achievement were in line with theoretical assumptions. Reliability was acceptable for all facets. Measurement invariance across language versions, gender, immigration status and cohort was established. We conclude that the presented questionnaire provides a short measurement of seven facets of Conscientiousness with valid and reliable scores.

Big five personality traits and performance: A quantitative synthesis of 50+ meta-analyses

OBJECTIVE

The connection between personality traits and performance has fascinated scholars in a variety of disciplines for over a century. The present research synthesizes results from 54 meta-analyses (k = 2028, N = 554,778) to examine the association of Big Five traits with overall performance.

METHOD

Quantitative aggregation procedures were used to assess the association of Big Five traits with performance, both overall and in specific performance categories.

RESULTS

Whereas conscientiousness yielded the strongest effect (ρ = 0.19), the remaining Big Five traits yielded comparable effects (ρ = 0.10, 0.10, -0.12, and 0.13 for extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness). These associations varied dramatically by performance category. Whereas conscientiousness was more strongly associated with academic than job performance (0.28 vs 0.20), extraversion (-0.01 vs 0.14) and neuroticism (-0.03 vs -0.15) were less strongly associated with academic performance. Finally, associations of personality with specific performance outcomes largely replicated across independent meta-analyses.

CONCLUSIONS

Our comprehensive synthesis demonstrates that Big Five traits have robust associations with performance and documents how these associations fluctuate across personality and performance dimensions.

Temperament and Academic Achievement in Children: A Meta-Analysis

This study aimed to systematize the diverse and rather controversial findings of empirical research on the relationship between the temperament and academic achievement of school children, as well as to determine the average effect size between these variables. We included 57 original studies of published and unpublished research conducted in 12 countries between 1985 and 2019, with cumulative sample size of 79,913 (varying from 6333 to 14,126 for links between particular temperament dimensions and specific domains of achievement). A random-effects and mixed-effects model was fitted to the data for the central tendency of the temperament-achievement relation and for analyzing moderators, respectively. The high heterogeneity of studies was tackled by selected specific moderators, namely, education level, transition status, family's socio-economic level, and sources of report on achievement and temperament. The main findings of this meta-analysis affirmed the positive association of effortful control (EC) and inverse relationship of negative affectivity (NA) with a child's academic performance, together with no apparent trend of surgency (SU) in this relationship; additionally, the sources of report significantly moderated the link between temperament and academic achievement.

The Contribution of Personality and Intelligence Toward Cognitive Competences in Higher Education

Personality and cognition are found to be two interrelated concepts and to both have a predictive power on educational and life outcomes. With this study we aimed at evaluating the extent to which personality traits interact with cognition in acquiring cognitive competences during higher education. In a sample of university students at different stages of their career and from different fields of study, we collected Big Five traits, as a measure of personality, and Intelligent Quotient (IQ), as a proxy of cognition. A set of multiple regressions served to explore the relative contribution of IQ and personality traits on the performance on two cognitive competences tests: literacy and numeracy. Results showed that IQ highly modulated numeracy but had a moderate or no impact on literacy while, compared with IQ, personality affects literacy more. In a further explorative analysis, we observed that both the effects of personality and IQ on cognitive competences were modulated by the level of the students' career (freshmen, undergraduates, and bachelor graduates). Different traits, and particularly conscientiousness, increased or decreased their impact on achieved scores depending on the educational level, while IQ lost its effect in undergraduates suggesting that personal dispositions become more influential in advancing the academic carrier. Finally, the field of study resulted to be a predictor of numeracy, but also an important covariate altering the pattern of personality impact.

A teacher like me? Different approaches to examining personality similarity between teachers and students

Research suggests that people tend to like others more if they are similar rather than dissimilar to themselves. Likewise, students may tend to prefer teachers with whom they share similar personality characteristics. To test this hypothesis, we examined the role of personality similarity between students and teachers in predicting how much students liked their teachers. Secondary school students ( N = 634) provided self-reports and reported on their teachers’ personality using a Big Five personality scale. Their teachers ( N = 31) also provided self-reports. These reports were then used to compute three indices of similarity; i.e. perceptual similarity, actual similarity, and perceptual accuracy which were used to explain teacher liking. Multilevel linear models showed that perceptual similarity (computed as the profile agreement across student self- and teacher-ascribed Big Five traits) had the largest effect on teacher liking. Teachers described as more agreeable and conscientious were liked by their students more. Findings highlight the importance of considering students’ perceptions of personality similarity with their teachers for understanding how students feel “connected” to their teachers and positively interact with them.

Personality and psychosocial functioning in early adolescence: Age-differential associations from the self- and parent perspective

Although psychosocial functioning and personality are indisputably interrelated in adulthood, much less is known about these associations in early adolescence. Accordingly, the goal of the current study was twofold. First, we investigated associations between adolescents’ personality and three broad indicators of psychosocial functioning: academic achievement, social relationships, and psychosocial adjustment. Second, we tested differential effects by comparing these associations across three different cohorts (Grades 5, 7, and 9) and across two raters of adolescents’ personality: self- and parent reports. Our sample consisted of N = 2667 students and their parents. According to latent regression models, adolescents’ personality traits showed significant associations with all psychosocial functioning variables: Achievement was most consistently associated with emotional stability, openness, and conscientiousness; social relationships were most consistently associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness; and psychosocial adjustment was related to all of the Big Five traits. Most associations did not vary across grades, whereas self-reported extraversion showed lower associations in later grades. Looking at rater-specific effects, we found fewer and usually smaller associations with parent- than with self-rated personality, again with the most significant differences with extraversion. We discuss the consistent interrelatedness between adolescents’ personality and psychosocial functioning but also highlight important exceptions in grade- and rater-specificities.

Unraveling the Relationship Between Teacher-Assigned Grades, Student Personality, and Standardized Test Scores

The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments (i.e., achieving similar scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests). Therefore, the present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations (via subject-specific standardized test scores). We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct (0.02 | β| ≤ 0.27) and indirect associations via test scores (0.01 | β| ≤ 0.07). Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students' scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery.

What teachers and parents can add to personality ratings of children: Unique associations with academic performance in elementary school

Adults’ ratings of children’s personality have been found to be more closely associated with academic performance than children’s self-reports. However, less is known about the relevance of the unique perspectives held by specific adult observers such as teachers and parents for explaining variance in academic performance. In this study, we applied bifactor (S–1) models for 1411 elementary school children to investigate the relative merits of teacher and parent ratings of children’s personalities for academic performance above and beyond the children’s self-reports. We examined these associations using standardized achievement test scores in addition to grades. We found that teachers’ unique views on children’s openness and conscientiousness had the strongest associations with academic performance. Parents’ unique views on children’s neuroticism showed incremental associations above teacher ratings or self-reports. For extraversion and agreeableness, however, children’s self-reports were more strongly associated with academic performance than teacher or parent ratings. These results highlight the differential value of using multiple informants when explaining academic performance with personality traits.

Active Learning Methodologies in Teacher Training for Cultural Sustainability

Within the framework of sustainable development, the concept of cultural heritage is linked to the heritage awareness of a specific spatial context, and to the conservation of collective memory. Despite the clear interest in cultural sustainability, the lack of research devoted to interpreting different teaching methods for transmitting patrimonial assets and preserving natural heritage is noteworthy. For this reason, the present study takes various scientific contributions as the background for considering sustainable education as a fundamental instrument to recover and conserve heritage resources, both from an informative and educational point of view. The aim of this study was to assess the training of new teachers in terms of the particular skills needed to develop active learning methods related to the teaching of heritage sustainability. The research sample consisted of 488 students in the Degree in Primary Education program. The methodology combined both qualitative and quantitative techniques, to obtain information from both observation and an opinion survey given to the students. The results show several opinions related to achieving and facilitating the implementation of innovative methodologies, due to a lack of initial university training. Generally speaking, this work provided an opportunity for students to analyze a series of prejudices regarding their working methods, and to overcome excessive theorization in their university studies.

A stable relationship between personality and academic performance from childhood through adolescence. An original study and replication in hundred-thousand-person samples

OBJECTIVE

Many studies have demonstrated that personality traits predict academic performance for students in high school and college. Much less evidence exists on whether the relationship between personality traits and academic performance changes from childhood to adolescence, and existing studies show very mixed findings. This study tests one hypothesis-that the importance of Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness for academic performance changes fundamentally during school-against an alternative hypothesis suggesting that the changing relationships found in previous research are largely measurement artifacts.

METHOD

We used a nationwide sample of 135,389 primary and lower secondary students from Grade 4 to Grade 8. We replicated all results in a separate sample of another 127,375 students.

RESULTS

We found that academic performance was equally strongly related to our measure of Conscientiousness at all these grade levels, and the significance of Agreeableness and Emotional Stability predominantly reflected their connections with Conscientiousness. However, age also appeared to shape the relationship between Emotional Stability and performance.

CONCLUSION

Amidst the replication crisis in psychology these findings demonstrate a very stable and predictable relationship between personality traits and academic performance, which may have important implications for the education of children already in primary school.

Personality-achievement associations in adolescence-examining associations across grade levels and learning environments

OBJECTIVE

This study examined associations between the five-factor personality traits and indicators of academic achievement (grades and test scores). A particular aim was to investigate whether personality-achievement associations differ between primary and secondary educational contexts and whether these differences vary between differential learning environments, that is academic versus nonacademic secondary schools.

METHOD

We used two representative random samples from Germany: N = 3,658 6th graders in their last year of primary school and N = 2,129 9th graders attending different secondary school tracks (n = 566 academic track students; n = 1,563 nonacademic track students).

RESULTS

First, our results confirmed positive associations between Conscientiousness, Openness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness and academic achievement as well as negative associations between academic achievement and Neuroticism. Second, associations with Conscientiousness were more pronounced for school grades than for test scores. Third, associations were higher for 6th than for 9th graders in the overall sample for all personality traits with the exception of Openness. Fourth, personality-achievement associations differed between academic and nonacademic track students.

CONCLUSION

In sum, our results suggest the need for an educational stage-specific perspective and contextually sensitive approach when examining personality-achievement associations.

Creativity as a Stepping Stone toward a Brighter Future

If IQs continue to rise over generation, why has the world been unable to solve basic recurrent problems? This paper argues that creativity, which is overlooked in IQ tests and showing no signs of a similar increase, may be part of the reason of why the Flynn Effect has not led to a better world. Creativity's predictive power for traditional positive outcomes, such as school or work performance, is significant but slight. However, there are other ways that creativity can help to make a better world. Two exemplar ways that are discussed in this paper are how creativity can (a) help people lead happier and more meaningful lives and (b) focus a spotlight on talented members of underrepresented groups who are overlooked by traditional measures. Both of these directions can lead to a world that is better equipped to solve larger issues.

Corporate social responsibility and behavioral intention: the moderator effect of contextual factors

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the behavioral intention (BI) of customers (e.g. repurchase/revisit intention, spread word of mouth, loyalty, willingness to pay).

Design/methodology/approach

A quantitative meta-analysis of 37 articles (n = 34,942) was conducted to determine the effect sizes of the relationship between CSR and BI of the customer. Furthermore, two kinds of contextual factors (environmental context and industry type) have been investigated as potential moderators between CSR and BI.

Findings

Meta-analysis suggests that the positive relationship between CSR and BI is well-established and has a large effect size (r = 0.42). Individually, the repurchase/revisit intention was the most affected by CSR (r = 47) followed by loyalty intention (r = 0.41) where both word of mouth and willingness-to-pay intentions were less affected by CSR (r = 0.38, r = 0.37, respectively). Moreover, the result of meta-regression shows that both environmental context and industry type do not moderate the relationship between CSR and BI.

Originality/value

The originality of this paper comes from presenting a summary of the direction of research on primary relationship between CSR and BI, as no prior meta-analysis on the primary relationship has been conducted till date (to the best of the authors’ knowledge).

Birth by caesarean section and school performance in Swedish adolescents- a population-based study

Background

Our objective was to assess the impact of obstetric mode of delivery, and in particular birth by Caesarean section (CS), on school performance in adolescents using a large, population-based cohort.

Methods

We extracted data from the Swedish Medical Birth Register and National School Register. We included all live singleton births in Sweden from 1982–1995 (n = 1,489,925). School grades were reported on a scale from 0 to 320, scores less than 160 (i.e. “pass”) were considered to be “poor school performance.” Mode of delivery was categorised as: unassisted vaginal delivery (VD), assisted VD, elective CS and emergency CS. We measured the association between mode of delivery and “poor school performance” using logistic regression. We then used quantile regression to assess the association between mode of delivery and school performance across the distribution of scores. We adjusted for maternal age, parity, small and large for gestational age, gestational age, maternal country of birth, maternal depression, non-affective disorder or bipolar disorder, parental income at time of birth, and parental social welfare at time of birth. We also conducted sensitivity analyses to investigate the association further.

Results

With logistic regression analysis, the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of assisted VD and poor school performance, compared to unassisted VD, was 1.06 (95% CI: 1.03–1.08). For elective CS it was 1.06 (95% CI:1.03-1.09) and for emergency CS it was 1.12 (95% CI: 1.09–1.15). With quantile regression, assisted VD showed little difference in scores, when compared to unassisted VD, at any point across the distribution. Elective CS was associated with a 1–3 point decrease in scores, and emergency CS was associated with a 2–5 point decrease in scores.

Conclusion

A slight association was found between birth by CS and school performance. However, the effect was quite small and given the complex nature of the relationship, should be interpreted with caution.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1304-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Genome-wide analyses for personality traits identify six genomic loci and show correlations with psychiatric disorders

Personality is influenced by genetic and environmental factors and associated with mental health. However, the underlying genetic determinants are largely unknown. We identified six genetic loci, including five novel loci, significantly associated with personality traits in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (N = 123,132-260,861). Of these genome-wide significant loci, extraversion was associated with variants in WSCD2 and near PCDH15, and neuroticism with variants on chromosome 8p23.1 and in L3MBTL2. We performed a principal component analysis to extract major dimensions underlying genetic variations among five personality traits and six psychiatric disorders (N = 5,422-18,759). The first genetic dimension separated personality traits and psychiatric disorders, except that neuroticism and openness to experience were clustered with the disorders. High genetic correlations were found between extraversion and attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and between openness and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The second genetic dimension was closely aligned with extraversion-introversion and grouped neuroticism with internalizing psychopathology (e.g., depression or anxiety).

What grades and achievement tests measure

Intelligence quotient (IQ), grades, and scores on achievement tests are widely used as measures of cognition, but the correlations among them are far from perfect. This paper uses a variety of datasets to show that personality and IQ predict grades and scores on achievement tests. Personality is relatively more important in predicting grades than scores on achievement tests. IQ is relatively more important in predicting scores on achievement tests. Personality is generally more predictive than IQ on a variety of important life outcomes. Both grades and achievement tests are substantially better predictors of important life outcomes than IQ. The reason is that both capture personality traits that have independent predictive power beyond that of IQ.

The Role of Personality in Predicting (Change in) Students’ Academic Success Across Four Years of Secondary School

Abstract. Little longitudinal research has addressed the question of whether the Big Five personality traits (i.e., O, C, E, A, N) predict educational outcomes and whether the Big Five provide incremental predictive validity for educational outcomes when prior achievement, intelligence, and academic self-concept are controlled for. Also, little is known about whether noncognitive factors are related to change in academic success, especially grades, after controlling for its stability. To address these research questions, we used data from the Luxembourg longitudinal extension of the 2009 cycle of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). We included data from two student cohorts that were followed across 4 years: The first cohort was in ninth grade when they participated in PISA (N = 240); the second cohort in 10th grade (N = 276). Correlational results showed that Conscientiousness and Openness were substantially related to subject-specific grades in Mathematics, French, and German across several school years. There was evidence for incremental predictive validity beyond intelligence and academic self-concepts. When controlling for the stability of grades, there were only small effects of all predictors on later grades. In summary, students’ personality (but also intelligence and academic self-concepts) predicted the stable part of grades rather than change.

Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement

Character strengths have been found to be substantially related to children’s and adolescents’ well-being. Initial evidence suggests that they also matter for school success (e.g., Weber and Ruch, 2012). The present set of two studies aimed at replicating and extending these findings in two different age groups, primary school students (N = 179; mean age = 11.6 years) and secondary school students (N = 199; mean age = 14.4 years). The students completed the VIA-Youth (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth), a self-report measure of the 24 character strengths in the VIA classification. Their teachers rated the students’ positive behavior in the classroom. Additionally, school achievement was assessed: For the primary school students (Study 1), teachers rated the students’ overall school achievement and for the secondary school students (Study 2), we used their grades as a measure of school achievement. We found that several character strengths were associated with both positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Across both samples, school achievement was correlated with love of learning, perseverance, zest, gratitude, hope, and perspective. The strongest correlations with positive classroom behavior were found for perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, social intelligence, and hope. For both samples, there were indirect effects of some of the character strengths on school achievement through teacher-rated positive classroom behavior. The converging findings from the two samples support the notion that character strengths contribute to positive classroom behavior, which in turn enhances school achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and for school interventions based on character strengths.