Gender differences in school success: what are the roles of students’ intelligence, personality and motivation?

Abstract

Background: Education is a key variable for reaching individually and socially desired outcomes. Specifically, school grades are important admission criteria for higher education and job positions. Nowadays, in countries committed to equal opportunities, girls obtain better school grades than boys, but the reasons why girls outperform boys are not well understood. In the following, individual student characteristics (i.e. intelligence, personality, motivation) were investigated as promising candidates that may account for gender differences in school performance.Purpose: This is a review of research findings on gender differences in performance-related individual students’ characteristics. These findings may help to explain differences in boys’ and girls’ school achievement. It was hypothesised that girls are better adapted to today’s school environment because of their intelligence (general, specific), personality (Big Five) and motivation (ability self-concept, interest or intrinsic values, goal orientations). To investigate this hypothesis, we reviewed literature with respect to five questions: (1) How strongly are intelligence, personality and motivation associated with school achievement? (2) Are there mean level differences between boys and girls in these characteristics? (3) Do these characteristics show gender differences in predicting school achievement? (4) Can gender differences in these characteristics explain the association between gender and school achievement? (5) Are gender differences in these characteristics causally related to differences in boys’ and girls’ school achievement?Sources of evidence: We mainly based our review on meta-analyses and literature reviews. If no meta-analyses or reviews were available, we reported results of representative single studies, including results from our own studies. To illustrate the magnitude of gender differences, we also reported statistical parameters (correlation coefficients, effect sizes and regression coefficients).Main argument: Concerning the five research questions, we found that, first, among the characteristics investigated here, general intelligence, ability self-concepts and self-discipline were the most important predictors of school performance. Second, gender differences in students’ individual characteristics varied from non-existent (e.g. general intelligence) to strong (e.g. self-discipline). Third, there was no indication that these characteristics were differently important for boys’ and girls’ school performance. Fourth, gender differences in intelligence, personality and motivation partially mediated the association between gender and school achievement but cannot fully explain it. Fifth, whether differences in intelligence, personality and motivation cause performance differences between boys and girls remains unknown because there were no studies that have investigated this question with designs that could test for causal inferences.Conclusion: Gender differences in students’ individual characteristics contribute to a significant extent to gender differences in school performance. Taken together, the effects of gender differences in students’ individual characteristics can partially but not fully account for gender differences in school performance. Girls are somewhat better adapted to today’s school environments, especially because of their better verbal intelligence, higher Agreeableness, stronger self-discipline, as well as certain aspects of their motivation. In light of these specific differences, it is argued that changing certain aspects of school environments might help boys to better succeed in school and, thus, reduce educational inequality.