Personality And Relationship With Academic Performance

Personality and relationship with academic performance

The study of the role of personality in educational psychology, with the focus of learning and performance attention could be mediated by interpersonal relationships, the student-professional relationship, the self-esteem of the students, the pro-social behavior, themotivation and cognitive performance. In order to reach an explanation of the role of personality in its contribution to a certain performance in it, a series of investigations have been carried out. From these, a firm conclusion has not been reached about the influences of personality traits on academic performance. According to recent studies, it has been tried to find out the relationship between cognitive and non -academic variables (Goff & Ackerman, 1992; Zeidner & Matthews, 2005) and apart, it has been tried to understand the individual differences that could contribute to a certain academic success. The studies carried out on this subject and in this area have focused more on cognitive features than on personality traits.

It wants to point out that it is very important to know why personality should be correlated with academic performance taking into account that the large part of personality models (including FFM) were not designed to calculate academic performance (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997). This contrasts with intelligence, since the early empirical refinement of its measurement was based partly on the analysis of academic performance (Spearman, 1904), and much of the academic tests were especially built to predict victory or academic failure (Bown & French, 1979).

However, there are good reasons why expect the structure of the FFM to predict academic performance, based on the theoretical position that directed the original development of the model. The basis of the theory for the Five Factor Model was provided by the lexical hypothesis (Allport & Odbert, 1936), the idea that there may be an evolutionary advantage in the recognition of valuable distinctions among individuals and that natural languages have originatedFrom development so that it would contribute to that identification (Saucier and Goldberg, 1996). A corollary of the lexical hypothesis is that the greater the assessment of the personality characteristic, the more descriptors of that characteristic are inside the natural languages. This in turn implies that it should be possible. 

Substantial investments regarding the education of societies and people show the high value that is granted to the performance of education, so that this estimate must also be associated with the FFM. The concept that the intellect, the economic and social level, as well as the personality affect the estimated social behaviors, makes sense with the proposal that the performance at work and in the field of education is determined by factors in relation tothe competition to perform, the occasion to perform and the disposition for it (Blumberg & Pringle, 1982; trag et al., 2005). 

The ability to perform includes knowledge, skills and intellect;This, in turn, is affected by environmental restrictions and resources, as well as socio -economic resources (trag et al., 2005);and the predisposition to reflect the motivation, cultural norms and personality (Blumberg and Pringle, 1982). The latest meta-analysis have provided evidence that capacity, as well as the opportunity to perform are correlated with academic performance. Strenze (2007), for example, discovered a correlation of .56 between intelligence and academic performance;Sirin’s meta-analysis (2005) provided a correlation of .32 between the socioeconomic level and academic performance.

It has been proven that the relative factors with the willingness to perform, such as assistance, initiative, participation in non -academic activities and attitudes to study, also contribute to academic performance apart from mental capacity (Willingham et al., 2002). In relation to the disposition to be committed, FFM dimensions can directly help. However, at the empirical level, they have been related indirectly through their associations with motivation. For example, Judge and Ilies (2002) discovered that the personality traits included in the FFM provided multiple correlation for the statistical prediction of motivation to achieve objectives. Therefore, it seems logical to expect that, like other issues of the willingness to be committed, personality is correlated with indirectly mediated academic performance by motivation.

Other arguments to relate personality to academic performance are based on correlations previously contemplated between these measures and various supplementary variables. As previously cited, personality and academic performance can be associated due to intelligence. Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham (2006) supported, according to this, that the correlations between academic performance and personality measures would show the correlations related to intelligence with personality. Despite this, the correlation of intelligence with personality is complicated;For example, the strength of the correlations between intelligence and extraversion change with the age of the participants and the methodology used (Wolf & Ackerman, 2005). As a consequence, it is difficult to trust this basis about the corresponding relationships with academic performance. However, given the reliable relationships of intelligence with academic performance, it would be difficult to explain the relationship between personality and academic performance without taking into account the presence of intelligence.

In short, the most frequent reasoning to expect personality measures (based on the FFM) to correlate with academic performance, depends on the test that is used and the importance that it gives to personality factors to predict socially accepted behaviors andPersonality recognition as a set of intentional and voluntary behaviors. In turn, one has the obligation to take into account intelligence in order to understand the association between a conduct executed and the resulting academic performance, that is, behaviors that contribute to school success.