Social origin, conscientiousness, and school grades: Does early socialization of the characteristics orderliness and focus contribute to the reproduction of social inequality?

Abstract

Among a child's skills and competencies, conscientiousness has been shown to be one of the most important predictors of school performance and later academic achievement. We refer this insight to the social reproduction of social inequality: Is socialization of personality characteristics in the parental home a significant mechanism that contributes to a child's life chances? Using school grades as the outcome measure, we combine different pathways toward their achievement: the impact of a child's conscientiousness on school grades, parental conscientiousness and parental stratification as sources for the differential conscientiousness of children, and the mediation of this interrelationship through different parenting styles. To date, almost no research has been conducted which integrates the unequal formation of personality and its consequences regarding life chances and compares it with the respective influences of social origin. Moreover, we add to existing research in social reproduction the distinction between different facets of conscientiousness. We show that it allows for more precise predictions of academic achievement than looking at the highly aggregated Big Five personality traits; moreover, these facets can be much better linked to the established body of sociological stratification theory. We combine data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the related Familien in Deutschland (FiD) study involving children 9–10 years of age and their parents and households. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we found theoretical and empirical evidence that only the “focus” facet and not the “orderliness” facet is highly positively correlated with school grades even more than indicators of social background. Our main hypothesis—that conscientiousness, specifically the facet focus, acts as one “transmission belt” between social background and school grades—was confirmed.