In plain language
Does a teenager's personality predict how well they will do at school a year later, beyond raw ability? This study focused on two traits that past research had linked to academic performance: conscientiousness (being organised, responsible, and persistent) and Eysenckian psychoticism (a tough-minded, non-conforming, and hostile style). The two traits come from different personality theories and are rarely measured in the same study.
The researchers followed 784 Australian students from the Wollongong Youth Study, measuring personality in the first year of high school and collecting end-of-year grades one year later in English, Mathematics, Science, Religious studies, Visual art, and Design. Importantly, they also controlled for gender and standardised verbal and numerical ability, so they could see whether personality predicted over- or under-achievement relative to a student's aptitude.
Conscientiousness predicted better grades and psychoticism predicted worse grades across every subject. Even after ability was taken into account, conscientiousness still predicted higher performance in English, Religious studies, Visual art, Design, and overall grade, whereas psychoticism's unique effect was limited to Science and Design. Students whose conscientiousness increased over the year improved, while students whose psychoticism increased did worse. The findings suggest that character-style traits, not just intelligence, shape how young adolescents perform at school.
Key findings
- Psychoticism was significantly negatively correlated with grades in all six subjects, with the strongest effect for Design (r = -.36, Cohen's d = 0.7).
- Conscientiousness was significantly positively correlated with grades in every subject, again strongest for Design (r = .34, d = 0.7) and Visual art (r = .26, d = 0.5).
- After controlling for gender and verbal and numerical ability, conscientiousness still uniquely predicted performance in English, Religious studies, Visual art, Design, and Total grade.
- The unique effect of psychoticism after controls was more modest, significantly predicting poorer outcomes only in Science and Design (plus Total grade).
- Across individual subjects, conscientiousness explained about 10.2% additional variance in grades, compared with 2.3% for psychoticism.
- Increases in conscientiousness from Time 1 to Time 2 predicted improved grades in English, Maths, Science, Design, and Total grade, while increases in psychoticism predicted poorer outcomes in English, Religious studies, and Design.
How to cite
APA
Heaven, P. C. L., Ciarrochi, J., & Vialle, W. (2007). Conscientiousness and Eysenckian psychoticism as predictors of school grades: A one-year longitudinal study. Personality and Individual Differences, 42(3), 535–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2006.07.028
BibTeX
@article{heaven2007conscientiousness,
author = {Heaven, Patrick C. L. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Vialle, Wilma},
title = {Conscientiousness and Eysenckian psychoticism as predictors of school grades: A one-year longitudinal study},
journal = {Personality and Individual Differences},
year = {2007},
volume = {42},
number = {3},
pages = {535--546},
doi = {10.1016/j.paid.2006.07.028}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.