Abstract
Personality predicts academic achievement above and beyond intelligence. However, studies investigating the possible interaction effects between personality and intelligence when predicting academic achievement are scarce, as is the separate investigation of broad personality factors versus narrow personality facets in this context. Two studies with 11th grade students (Study 1: N = 421; Study 2: N = 243) were conducted to close this research gap. The students completed the Intelligence-Structure-Test 2000 R measuring general reasoning ability, and a well-established personality inventory based on the Five Factor Model. Academic achievement was operationalized via Grade Point Average. Using hierarchical regression and moderation analyses, Study 1 revealed that Conscientiousness interacted with intelligence when predicting academic achievement: there was a stronger association between intelligence and academic achievement when students scored higher on the Conscientiousness scale. Study 2 confirmed the findings from Study 1 and also found a moderation effect of Neuroticism (stronger association between intelligence and academic achievement with lower values on the Neuroticism scale). Analyses at the facet level revealed much more differentiated results than did analyses at the domain level, suggesting that investigating personality facets should be preferred over investigating personality domains when predicting academic achievement.
Highlights
Since the improvement of learning is the central goal of Educational Psychology, the investigation of factors contributing to academic achievement is among its most important issues
A), their effects were stronger than the effect of the respective domain, whereas in other cases, they were slightly smaller. These findings suggest that using personality facets in the prediction of grade point average (GPA) might provide more nuanced results than relying on broad personality domains
Whereas we found no interaction between Neuroticism (N) and intelligence in Study 1, we found in Study 2 that among students with lower scores on N, there was a stronger relation between intelligence and GPA than among students with higher scores on N
Summary
Since the improvement of learning is the central goal of Educational Psychology, the investigation of factors contributing to academic achievement is among its most important issues. Cognitive ability is surely the most important one, setting the stage for what is theoretically possible for the student to achieve [2,3]. Non-cognitive factors such as personality traits might exert an influence on academic achievement given their influence on the student’s work approach [4]. They might decide upon how well a student manages to convert his or her intelligence into academic achievement, that is, they might interact with intelligence in the prediction of academic achievement. Only a little attention has been paid to possible interaction effects between personality and intelligence in forming academic achievement. We examined whether the investigation of personality facets instead of broader personality factors in the interaction with intelligence would provide more nuanced results than the investigation of broad factors only
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