Personality Traits and Academic Performance: Evidence from college students in Brazil

Abstract

Drawing from a sample of 534 college students from a small private collegeand a large public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this study investigates the effectsof personality traits, measured by the Big Five (neuroticism, extroversion, opennessto experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), Core Self-evaluation (locusof control, neuroticism, self-efficacy, and self-esteem), and Grit (loosely definedas enthusiasm and resilience), on academic performance. Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that a one-standard deviation increase in conscientiousnessis associated with a 2.8% increase in Graduate-Point Average (GPA). Additionally, aone-standard deviation increase in Grit is associated with an increase of 1.8% in GPA.Moreover, we also find that extroversion and agreeableness are negatively relatedto academic performance. These results suggest that investing in some specificpersonality traits, such as Grit and conscientiousness can have significant payoffsin terms of academic performance.