The Big Five personality traits, learning styles, and academic achievement

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.04.019

Personality and Individual Differences

Volume 51, Issue 4, September 2011, Pages 472-477

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.04.019 Get rights and content

Abstract

Personality and learning styles are both likely to play significant roles in influencing academic achievement. College students (308 undergraduates) completed the Five Factor Inventory and the Inventory of Learning Processes and reported their grade point average. Two of the Big Five traits, conscientiousness and agreeableness, were positively related with all four learning styles (synthesis analysis, methodical study, fact retention, and elaborative processing), whereas neuroticism was negatively related with all four learning styles. In addition, extraversion and openness were positively related with elaborative processing. The Big Five together explained 14% of the variance in grade point average (GPA), and learning styles explained an additional 3%, suggesting that both personality traits and learning styles contribute to academic performance. Further, the relationship between openness and GPA was mediated by reflective learning styles (synthesis-analysis and elaborative processing). These latter results suggest that being intellectually curious fully enhances academic performance when students combine this scholarly interest with thoughtful information processing. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of teaching techniques and curriculum design.

Highlights

► Personality traits and learning styles together contribute to academic performance. ► The Big Five explained 14% of the variance in GPA, and learning styles explained an additional 3%. ► The relationship between openness and GPA is mediated by synthesis-analysis and elaborative processing learning styles.

Introduction

The quality of students’ thoughts is critical to learning and could potentially determine their academic achievement. College students differ in how they process, encode, recall, organize, and apply the information they learn; some are thoughtful learners and others process information more superficially. Are these individual differences in preferred learning strategies and depth of information processing related to personality? Do learning strategies mediate the link between personality traits and academic achievement? We attempted to answer these questions by investigating the relationships between personality traits, learning styles, and academic achievement among college students.

Section snippets

Big Five

The Big Five framework of personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1992) has emerged as a robust and parsimonious model for understanding the relationship between personality and various academic behaviors (Poropat, 2009). Conscientiousness is exemplified by being disciplined, organized, and achievement-oriented. Neuroticism refers to degree of emotional stability, impulse control, and anxiety. Extraversion is displayed through a higher degree of sociability, assertiveness, and talkativeness.

Method

Participants were 308 undergraduate college students, including 147 males (47.7%) and 161 females (52.3%) who completed the Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), the Inventory of Learning Processes (ILP), reported their current GPA, and provided demographic information. Students represented all undergraduate classes (56.2% freshmen, 17.9% sophomores, 9.4% juniors, and 15.9% seniors), had a variety of majors (liberal arts, business, education, science, engineering, applied sciences and arts, mass

Correlation analyses

Correlation analyses indicated a number of significant relationships (see Table 1). Specifically, consistent with our predictions, (a) openness was positively related with the two reflective learning styles (synthesis-analysis and elaborative processing), (b) neuroticism was negatively related with all the four learning styles, and (c) agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively related to all the four learning styles. Finally, extraversion was positively related with fact retention and

Discussion

Our results establish a number of interesting linkages between the Big Five personality traits, learning styles, and academic achievement, and also show that relationships between openness and GPA are partially mediated by reflective learning styles. Taken as a whole, these findings yield a number of insights with potential practical implications on the dynamic interplay between personality and learning styles, as well as on their joint influence on academic achievement.

First, our personality

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View full text

The Big Five personality traits, learning styles, and academic achievement

Abstract

Highlights

Introduction

Section snippets

Big Five

Method

Correlation analyses

Discussion

Personality and Individual Differences

Journal of Research in Personality

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Personality and Individual Differences

Personality and Individual Differences

Journal of Research in Personality

Personality and Individual Differences

The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Longitudinal changes in the study habits of successful college students

Educational and Psychological Measurement

Personality traits and academic examination performance

European Journal of Personality

NEO PI-R: Professional Manual: Revised NEO PI-R and NEO-FFI

Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals

Journal of Personality & Social Psychology

Approaches to studying and levels of processing in university students

British Journal of Educational Psychology

Factors associated with success in medical school: systematic review of the literature

British Medical Journal

Predicting students as deep and shallow processors of information

Perceptual and Motor Skills

An individual difference perspective on student diversity

Higher Education