Personality Type and Student Performance in Upper-Level Economics Courses: The Importance of Race and Gender

Abstract

The authors demonstrate that personality type is an important explanatory variable in student performance in economics courses at the upper level, just as it was at the principles level. Similar to the results for principles students, they find that introverted students make better grades in their upper-level economics classes than identical students who are extroverts. They also find that students with SJ temperaments make significantly better grades in upper-level economics than identical students with SP temperaments. They find that certain personality types combine with certain race and gender effects to produce students who outperform other students. Adding a different dimension to the literature on minority educational attainment, their results suggest that African Americans do not perform more poorly than nonblacks in economics. They perform as well as ordinary students of any race, they are just less likely to be “star performers”.