When categorizing the existing research on the Big Five and academic success, there are obvious patterns that can be seen in the findings. Of course, the most obvious statement that can
be made from even a superficial glancing at what literature is available is that there are in fact clear, undeniable relationships to be drawn – between the five personality traits and behavior in general, and more narrowly, between the traits and academic outcomes. Most helpful to the purpose of this research is the pattern found to reveal strong relationships between specific Big Five traits and positive academic performance and the patterns associating the sub-facet level more strongly with the academic outcomes than the more broad meta-traits. In reviewing the existing literature perhaps most interesting and, in the end, most compelling towards the need for execution of similar work in Taiwan, was the patterns found in the geographical replication of the findings. It is this repetition of findings in different nations that are compelling to the idea that similar findings can be expected from this research among international students in Taiwan.
The literature presented reveals as its foundation the rationality of using Big Five personality traits – to review, these are Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism - to predict academic outcomes. One of many research examples supporting this point is the study by Conard, (2006), which investigated validity of the Big 5 for predicting college GPA and course performance. Their results concluded that personality measures are promising predictors of academic outcomes and showed that Conscientiousness predicted both their investigated criterion. Similarly, Noftle, and Robins, (2007), examined the relationship between Big 5 traits and SAT scores and high school and college GPA. This study is of particular interest, since the authors claimed that there had been virtually no research on personality and SAT scores at the time, and the SAT is an internationally recognized test of academic achievement. Also of repute was the fact that Noftle and Robins replicated their findings across 4 different personality inventories and found that participants’ scoring in Openness was the strongest predictor of SAT verbal scores, that Conscientiousness predicted high school and college GPA and of course, proved that personality traits have independent effects on academic outcomes, even when controlling for traditional predictors of these outcomes, such as controlling for SAT scores when examining college GPA.
As mentioned, according to the existing literature, the deeper level of trait facets seem to be even more strongly related to academic outcomes than just the Big Five. Paunonen, and Ashton, (2001) studied two of the Big 5 factors - Conscientiousness and Openness - along with 2 of their constituent narrow personality traits - Need for Achievement and Need for Understanding - to predict final grades in an undergraduate psychology course and found exactly
that the lower level traits were stronger predictors of grade outcomes. In this case, the researchers even concluded that broad factor measures may be counterproductive in behavior prediction and explanation, but there does not seem to be many others in the field who would concur with this degree of statement. Lounsbury, Welsh, Gibson, and Sundstrom, (2005), for example, examined the relationships between all of the broad Big 5 traits and the narrow personality traits of Optimism and Work Drive in relation to cognitive ability in 375 high school students in Tennessee, USA (their research sampled middle school students as well) and found that Optimism – the narrow personality trait - and Openness were the significant predictors in their high school sample. A pattern emerges here highlighting Conscientiousness and Openness as the Big 5 traits most closely linked with academic outcomes.
That is, the existing literature repeatedly indicates high scoring in these personality factors predicts high academic achievement, whether it is measured using test scores, or GPA, or other markers of academic performance. The studies mentioned here already were exclusively American in origin, but the thread seems to persist in other countries as well. O’Connor, and Paunonen, (2007) reviewed Canadian empirical literature on relationship between big 5 traits and post-secondary academic achievement and found Conscientiousness to be most strongly and consistently associated with academic success and Openness also to be sometimes positively associated. Thus, the personality factor that seems to be more steadily connected with academic performance is Conscientiousness (Blickle, 1996; Busato et al., 2000; Costa & McCrae, 1992;
De Raad & Schouwenburg, 1996). Studies have duplicated this relationship in school (Wolfe &
Johnson, 1995) as well as undergraduate (Goff & Ackerman, 1992) and postgraduate (Hirschberg & Itkin, 1978) education. Some authors have argued that Conscientiousness may affect academic
Openness to Experience also known as intellect, has been connected with academic success in school (Shuerger & Kuma, 1987) and university, both at an undergraduate (De Fruyt
& Mervielde, 1996) and postgraduate (Hirschberg & Itkin, 1978) level. Some have debated that this link can be expounded in terms of the correlation between crystallized intelligence also referred to as general intelligence, and the Openness to Experience trait (Brand, 1994). Others researchers have explained this association in terms of typical rather than maximal performance (Goff & Ackerman, 1992; Hofstee, 2001), since Openness has also been revealed to be vastly correlated with Typical Intellectual Engagement (Goff & Ackerman, 1992), a trait that refers to
an individual’s typical determinations to participate in intellectual activities. Nevertheless, both Openness to Experience and Typical Intellectual Engagement have not always verified predictive validity with regard to academic achievement (Goff & Ackerman, 1992; Busato et al., 2000;
Wolfe & Johnson, 1995).
The more conventional trait variables of Extraversion and Neuroticism have also been connected with academic performance after nearly 40 years of investigation (Child, 1964).
Studies conducted earlier have indorsed the relationship between Extraversion and academic performance to introverts’ greater ability to merge learning, lesser distractibility, and better study habits (Entwistle & Entwistle, 1970). Recent studies (Sanchez-Marin, Rejano-Infante, &
Rodriguez-Troyano, 2001) have also implied that extraverts would not perform as high or successfully in academic settings due to their distractibility, sociability, and spontaneity. The negative relation between academic achievement and Neuroticism (Furnham & Medhurst, 1995) has generally been justified in terms of stress and anxiety under test (examination) conditions (Zeidner & Matthews, 2000), although such personalities may affect academic performance in a more general way, for example, not just through exam performance (Halamandaris & Power, 1999). Furthermore, prior research proposed a likely vagueness in the relation between Neuroticism - particularly anxiety and academic achievement. Particularly, Eysenck and Eysenck (1985) have advocated that the motivational effects of anxiety may be vaster in highly intelligent students for they confront little difficulty when it comes to them studying. In this sense Neuroticism is a positive predictor in intelligent participants but a negative predictor in those participants who are less talented.
The literature here also confirms the foundational premise that narrow facets are stronger predictors than the broad traits, and that personality can account for variance in academic performance beyond that accounted for by measures of cognitive ability. Worth noting among the international literature are the studies of Chamorro‐Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2003).
They used Big 5 personality trait measurement and another personality trait tool called the EPQ-R at two separate British universities over 3 years and assessed academic performance via exams and final projects as well as other indicators of academic behavior such as absenteeism and essay writing ability. In their results Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were found to predict overall final exam grades better than several of the other academic behavior predictors; according to this study Neuroticism impairs academic success and Conscientiousness most likely improves it.
Their study in which they used the NEO PI-R inventory on British university students and investigated broad Big Five traits and the sub-facet personality traits of dutifulness and achievement striving came to almost the exact same findings.