This article reports a meta-analysis of personality-academic performance relationships, based on the 5-factor model, in which cumulative sample sizes ranged to over 70,000. Most analyzed studies came from the tertiary level of education, but there were similar aggregate samples from secondary and tertiary education. There was a comparatively smaller sample derived from studies at the primary level. Academic performance was found to correlate significantly with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Where tested, correlations between Conscientiousness and academic performance were largely independent of intelligence. When secondary academic performance was controlled for, Conscientiousness added as much to the prediction of tertiary academic performance as did intelligence. Strong evidence was found for moderators of correlations. Academic level (primary, secondary, or tertiary), average age of participant, and the interaction between academic level and age significantly moderated correlations with academic performance. Possible explanations for these moderator effects are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.

/pdf/a-meta-analysis-of-the-five-factor-model-of-personality-and-pfzsbphxto.pdf

A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance.

Criminal justice and mental health professionals have long sought a reliable technique for predicting future criminal behavior among juvenile offenders. Among adults, psychopathy measures are highly predictive of future violence (Glover, Nicholson, Hemmati, Bernfeld, & Quinsey, 2002; Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 1991; Hemphill, Hare, & Wong, 1998; Serin, 1996). As such, the utility of psychopathy as a predictor of general and violent recidivism in adults has sparked considerable interest in applying the construct to adolescents. By assessing psychopathic traits, researchers have tried to distinguish between adolescent offenders whose deviant behavior is more transitory and less severe and those with more serious and stable patterns of behavior (Caputo, Frick, & Brodsky, 1999; Kruh, Frick, & Clements, 2005).

Measures designed to assess psychopathy in juvenile populations are increasingly used to make decisions in court cases (Viljoen, MacDougall, Gagnon, Douglas, & Crosby, 2009). Such measures may be used to determine whether a youth is tried in juvenile or adult court and whether sentencing focuses on treatment or punishment (Petrila & Skeem, 2003; Seagrave & Grisso, 2002). Little research, however, has examined whether measures of juvenile psychopathy accurately predict long-term recidivism among adolescent offenders. It is therefore imperative to determine whether the various methods for assessing psychopathy in youths predict both short- and long-term recidivism and to what degree these measures overlap in identifying psychopathic youths.

The present study examines the relative power of three distinct measures of psychopathy for predicting short- and long-term recidivism in a sample of serious male juvenile offenders. These instruments are described in the next section.

/pdf/a-multimethod-assessment-of-juvenile-psychopathy-comparing-bj53hdfjk8.pdf

A multimethod assessment of juvenile psychopathy: comparing the predictive utility of the PCL:YV, YPI, and NEO PRI.

https://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2012-studerluethi.pdf

Influence of neuroticism and conscientiousness on working memory training outcome

The relation between temperament and happiness was assessed in a sample of 441 children aged 7–14 years drawn from a population in Northern India. Parents assessed their children’s happiness and rated their children’s temperament using the Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability Temperament Survey (EAS). Children self-reported their own happiness using a single-item measure, the Oxford Happiness Scale Short Form, and the Subjective Happiness Scale. Parents’ temperament ratings conformed to the four factor structure proposed by Buss and Plomin (Temperament: early developing personality traits. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, 1984): Emotionality, Activity, Sociability, and Shyness. Temperament accounted for between 4 and 11% of the variance in children’s happiness depending on the measures. Children who were more social and active, and less shy, were happier. This result parallels the well-established relation between happiness and personality in adults and is similar to recent research on happiness and temperament in children; temperament traits akin to extraversion were positively associated with happiness. However, despite that neuroticism and its temperament counterpart are strongly and consistently linked to happiness in adults, the relation between happiness and the temperament trait associated with neuroticism (i.e., Emotionality) was weak. This suggests that the relations between temperament and happiness in children may not completely generalize across cultures.

Temperament and Happiness in Children in India

Mounting evidence suggests that several inventories assessing both normal personality and personality disorders measure common dimensional personality traits (i.e., Antagonism, Constraint, Emotional Instability, Extraversion, and Unconventionality), albeit providing unique information along the underlying trait continuum. We used Widiger and Simonsen's (2005) pantheoretical integrative model of dimensional personality assessment as a guide to create item pools. We then used Item Response Theory (IRT) to compare the assessment of these five personality traits across three established dimensional measures of personality: the Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality (SNAP), the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R). We found that items from each inventory map onto these five common personality traits in predictable ways. The IRT analyses, however, documented considerable variability in the item and test information derived from each inventory. Our findings support the notion that the integration of multiple perspectives will provide greater information about personality while minimizing the weaknesses of any single instrument.

/pdf/integrating-competing-dimensional-models-of-personality-aqisc6oho7.pdf

Su-Ying Tsai

Papers

Chinese NEO-PI-R in Taiwanese adolescents