Personality, cognitive ability, and academic performance: Differential associations across school subjects and school tracks.

AIM: Personality traits and cognitive ability are well-established predictors of academic performance. Yet, how consistent and generalizable are the associations between personality, cognitive ability, and performance? Building on theoretical arguments that trait-performance relations should vary depending on the demands and opportunities for trait expression in the learning environment, we investigated whether the associations of personality (Big Five) and cognitive ability (fluid intelligence) with academic performance (grades and tests scores) vary across school subjects (German and math) and across ability-grouped school tracks (academic, intermediate, and vocational). METHOD: Multiple group structural equation models in a large representative sample of ninth-grade students (N = 12,915) from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). RESULTS: Differential associations across school subjects emerged for cognitive ability, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness (math > German); and for Openness and Extraversion (German > math). Differential associations across school tracks emerged for cognitive ability, Conscientiousness (academic > intermediate > vocational) and Agreeableness (academic > intermediate > vocational). Personality traits explained more variation in academic performance in the academic than in the other tracks. CONCLUSION: Most trait-performance relations varied across subjects, tracks, or both. These findings highlight the need for more nuanced and context-minded perspective on trait-performance relations.

Measuring four perspectives of justice sensitivity with two items each.

People differ systematically in their vulnerability to injustice. We present two-item scales for the efficient measurement of justice sensitivity from 4 perspectives (victim, observer, beneficiary, perpetrator). In Study 1 using a quota-based sample of German adults, a latent state-trait analysis revealed the factorial validity and high reliabilities of the scales. In Study 2 employing a large random sample, we tested for measurement invariance of the items within the context of our short 2-item scales compared to the original 10-item scales. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that the validity of the indicators and the internal structure of the assessed constructs did not change across item contexts. In both studies, correlations with personality dimensions and life satisfaction provide evidence for the validity of our scales. With the presented instrument, future research can extend scientific knowledge regarding the role of individual differences in reactions to injustice for the explanation of well-being and physical health.

AI Psychometrics: Assessing the Psychological Profiles of Large Language Models Through Psychometric Inventories.

We illustrate how standard psychometric inventories originally designed for assessing noncognitive human traits can be repurposed as diagnostic tools to evaluate analogous traits in large language models (LLMs). We start from the assumption that LLMs, inadvertently yet inevitably, acquire psychological traits (metaphorically speaking) from the vast text corpora on which they are trained. Such corpora contain sediments of the personalities, values, beliefs, and biases of the countless human authors of these texts, which LLMs learn through a complex training process. The traits that LLMs acquire in such a way can potentially influence their behavior, that is, their outputs in downstream tasks and applications in which they are employed, which in turn may have real-world consequences for individuals and social groups. By eliciting LLMs' responses to language-based psychometric inventories, we can bring their traits to light. Psychometric profiling enables researchers to study and compare LLMs in terms of noncognitive characteristics, thereby providing a window into the personalities, values, beliefs, and biases these models exhibit (or mimic). We discuss the history of similar ideas and outline possible psychometric approaches for LLMs. We demonstrate one promising approach, zero-shot classification, for several LLMs and psychometric inventories. We conclude by highlighting open challenges and future avenues of research for AI Psychometrics.

Assessing Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills in Just a Few Minutes: 96-, 45-, and 20-Item Short Forms of the BESSI.

Social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills matter for individuals' well-being and success. The behavioral, emotional, and social skills inventory (BESSI) uses 192 items to assess 32 specific SEB skills across five broad skill domains. This research developed three short forms of the BESSI-192 and explored their measurement properties, predictive validity, and cross-cultural comparability. We found that BESSI-96, BESSI-45, and BESSI-20 largely captured the psychological content of the BESSI-192 measure, retained a robust multidimensional structure, and demonstrated adequate reliability. At the domain and facet level, the BESSI short forms showed patterns of associations with external criteria that were similar to the BESSI-192 and preserved most of the BESSI-192's predictive power. The BESSI short forms also demonstrated full or partial measurement invariance between the primarily U.S.-based and German adult samples. We conclude by discussing contexts in which the short forms may be useful for researchers and practitioners.

An English-Language adaptation and validation of the Justice Sensitivity Short Scales-8 (JSS-8).

The construct of justice sensitivity has four perspectives that capture individual differences in the strength of reactions to injustice when becoming a victim of injustice (victim sensitivity), when witnessing injustice as an outsider (observer sensitivity), when passively benefitting from an injustice done to others (beneficiary sensitivity), or when committing an injustice (perpetrator sensitivity). Individual differences in these four justice sensitivity perspectives are highly relevant in moral research. With just eight items in total, the Justice Sensitivity Short Scales-8 (JSS-8) are a very efficient way to measure the four perspectives. JSS-8 was initially constructed in German (Ungerechtigkeitssensibilität-Skalen-8, USS-8) and later translated into English. In the present study, we empirically validated this English-language adaptation in a heterogeneous quota sample from the UK. The results show that the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, validity, standardization) of JSS-8 are good, and that they are comparable with those of the German-language source version. Because of the invariance of loadings, intercepts, and residual variances, researchers can compare manifest scale statistics (i.e., means, variances) of JSS-8 across the UK and Germany. JSS-8 is thus particularly suitable for measuring justice sensitivity in various research areas with constraints on assessment time and questionnaire space.

Beyond Competencies: Associations between Personality and School Grades Are Largely Independent of Subject-Specific and General Cognitive Competencies.

The Big Five personality traits are established predictors of school grades. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not yet well understood. Effects of personality on grades might arise because behavioral tendencies facilitate learning and increase subject-specific competencies. Alternatively, personality effects on grades might be independent of cognitive competencies and reflect otherwise valued behaviors or teachers' grading practices. In the current study, we drew on large-scale data of 7th and 9th graders in Germany to explore the extent to which personality predicted grades even after accounting for competencies. Controlling for competencies and other key covariates, we cross-sectionally and longitudinally examined personality-grade associations across different school subjects, grade levels, and school types. Results indicate that the predictive power of personality is largely independent of subject-specific and general cognitive competencies. The largest effects emerged for conscientiousness. For openness, associations with grades partly overlapped with competencies, suggesting that openness may operate by fostering competencies. Overall, our results suggest that the associations between personality and grades unfold mostly independently of course mastery. This finding underlines the socioemotional value of personality in the classroom and encourages a more fine-grained view of the interplay between personality, competencies, classroom behavior, and grades.

The impulsive behavior short scale-8 (I-8): A comprehensive validation of the English-language adaptation.

The Impulsive Behavior Short Scale-8 (I-8) measures the psychological construct of impulsivity with four subscales comprising two items each (completion time < 1 min). The aim of the present study was threefold: (1) to assess the psychometric properties (objectivity, reliability, and validity) of the English-language I-8; (2) to compare these psychometric properties with those of the original German-language source version of the scale; and (3) to test the cross-national comparability of the scale via measurement invariance tests. For this purpose, we used heterogeneous quota samples from the UK and Germany. Our results indicate that I-8 is a reliable and valid short scale with highly comparable psychometric properties across both language versions. In addition, I-8 showed a highly similar correlational pattern with various extraneous variables across the two nations. Furthermore, partial scalar invariance and full invariance of residual variances held, allowing the comparison of latent means and observed (co)variances across nations. I-8 lends itself as a measure of impulsive behavior especially in surveys in which assessment time is limited, such as in large-scale cross-national surveys.

Personality Change Through Arts Education: A Review and Call for Further Research.

Education involving active engagement in the arts, herein called arts education, is often believed to foster the development of desirable personality traits and skills in children and adolescents. Yet the impact of arts education on personality development has rarely been systematically investigated. In the current article, we reviewed the literature on personality change through arts education. We identified 36 suitable experimental and quasi-experimental studies. Evidence from these studies tentatively suggests that arts-education programs can foster personality traits such as extraversion and conscientiousness but not self-esteem. In addition, the effects of arts education appeared to be stronger in early and middle childhood than in preadolescence and early adolescence. However, the evidence for the effectiveness of arts education was very limited among the few included true experiments. Furthermore, the reviewed studies were heterogenous and subject to content-related, methodological, and statistical limitations. Thus, the current evidence base is inconclusive as to the effects of arts education on personality development. By identifying potential effects of arts education and limitations of past research, our review serves as a call for more research and guidepost for future studies on arts education and personality change.

The Internal-External Locus of Control Short Scale-4 (IE-4): A comprehensive validation of the English-language adaptation.

The Internal-External Locus of Control Short Scale-4 (IE-4) measures two dimensions of the personality trait locus of control with two items each. IE-4 was originally developed and validated in German and later translated into English. In the present study, we assessed the psychometric properties (i.e., objectivity, reliability, validity) of the English-language IE-4, compared these psychometric properties with those of the German-language source version, and tested measurement invariance across both language versions. Using heterogeneous quota samples from the UK and Germany, we find that the English-language adaptation has satisfactory reliability and plausible correlations with 11 external variables (e.g., general self-efficacy, self-esteem, impulsive behavior, Emotional Stability), which are comparable with those of the German-language source version. Moreover, metric measurement invariance of the scale holds when comparing the UK and Germany, implying the comparability of correlations based on the latent factors across the two nations. As an ultra-short scale (completion time < 30 s), IE-4 lends itself particularly to the assessment of locus of control in survey contexts in which assessment time or questionnaire space are limited. It can be applied in a variety of research disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, or economics.

The Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI): Psychometric Properties of a German-Language Adaptation, Temporal Stabilities of the Skills, and Associations with Personality and Intelligence.

Social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills comprise a broad set of abilities that are essential for building and maintaining relationships, regulating emotions, selecting and pursuing goals, or exploring novel stimuli. Toward an improved SEB skill assessment, Soto and colleagues recently introduced the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI). Measuring 32 facets from 5 domains with 192 items (assessment duration: ~15 min), BESSI constitutes the most extensive SEB inventory to date. However, so far, BESSI exists only in English. In three studies, we comprehensively validated a novel German-language adaptation, BESSI-G. Moreover, we expanded evidence on BESSI in three ways by (1) assessing the psychometric properties of the 32 individual skill facets, in addition to their domain-level structure; (2) providing first insights into the temporal stabilities of the 32 facets over 1.5 and 8 months; and (3) investigating the domains' and facets' associations with intelligence, in addition to personality traits. Results show that BESSI-G exhibits good psychometric properties (unidimensionality, reliability, factorial validity). Its domain-level structure is highly similar to that of the English-language source version. The facets show high temporal stabilities, convergent validity with personality traits, and discriminant validity with fluid and crystallized intelligence. We discuss implications for research on SEB skills.

Two Forms of Social Inequality in Students' Socio-Emotional Skills: Do the Levels of Big Five Personality Traits and Their Associations With Academic Achievement Depend on Parental Socioeconomic Status?

Some researchers and policymakers advocate a stronger focus on fostering socio-emotional skills in the hope of helping students to succeed academically, especially those who are socially disadvantaged. Others have cautioned that this might increase, rather than reduce, social inequality because personality traits conducive to achievement are themselves unevenly distributed in disfavor of socially disadvantaged students. Our paper contributes to this debate. Analyzing representative, large-scale data on 9,300 ninth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and using the Big Five personality traits as a measure of socio-emotional skills, we cast light on two related yet distinct aspects of social inequality in socio-emotional skills: First, do levels of personality traits conducive to achievement vary as a function of students' parental socioeconomic status (pSES)? Second, do the returns to personality traits in terms of trait-achievement relations vary as function of pSES? Results showed that differences in Big Five traits between students with different pSES were small (0.04 ≤ |r| ≤ 0.09), especially when compared with pSES-related differences in cognitive skills (fluid intelligence) and sex-related differences in personality. The returns to Conscientiousness-the personality trait most relevant to achievement-in terms of its relations to academic achievement were higher in higher- vs. lower-SES students. Trait-achievement relations did not vary as a function of pSES for the other Big Five traits. Overall, both types of inequality were limited in magnitude. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and practice and delineate directions for further research.

Grit (effortful persistence) can be measured with a short scale, shows little variation across socio-demographic subgroups, and is associated with career success and career engagement.

Grit (effortful persistence) has received considerable attention as a personality trait relevant for success and performance. However, critics have questioned grit's construct validity and criterion validity. Here we report on two studies that contribute to the debate surrounding the grit construct. Study 1 (N = 6,230) examined the psychometric properties of a five-item grit scale, covering mainly the perseverance facet, in a large and representative sample of German adults. Moreover, it investigated the distribution of grit across sociodemographic subgroups (age groups, genders, educational strata, employment statuses). Multiple-group measurement models demonstrated that grit showed full metric, but only partial scalar, invariance across all sociodemographic subgroups. Sociodemographic differences in the levels of grit emerged for age, education, and employment status but were generally small. Study 2 investigated how grit relates to career success (income, job prestige, job satisfaction) and career engagement (working overtime, participation in continuing professional development courses, attitudes toward lifelong learning) in an employed subsample (n = 2,246). When modeled as a first-order factor, grit was incrementally associated with all indicators of career success and especially of career engagement (.08 ≤ ß ≤ .75)-over and above cognitive ability and sociodemographic characteristics. When modeled as a residual facet of conscientiousness, grit largely retained its criterion validity for success but only partly for engagement (-.14 ≤ ß ≤ .61). Our findings offer qualified support for the psychometric quality of the short grit scale and suggest that grit may provide some added value in predicting career outcomes. We critically discuss these findings while highlighting that grit hardly differs from established facets of conscientiousness such as industriousness/perseverance.

Individual, situational, and cultural correlates of acquiescent responding: Towards a unified conceptual framework.

Acquiescence ('yea-saying') can seriously harm the validity of self-report questionnaire data. Towards a better understanding of why some individuals and groups acquiesce more strongly than others do, we developed a unified conceptual framework of acquiescent responding. Our framework posits that acquiescent responding is a joint function of respondent characteristics (e.g. age, education, values), situational/survey characteristics (e.g., interview privacy, respondents' interest), and cultural characteristics (e.g., social norms, economic development). The framework posits two putative mechanisms through which these characteristics may relate to acquiescence: cognitive processing capacities and deferential communication styles. Multilevel analyses using data from 60 heterogeneous countries from the World Values Survey (N = 90,347) support our framework's proposition that acquiescence is a joint function of respondent, situational, and cultural characteristics. Acquiescence was higher among respondents who were older (over 55 years old), less educated, who valued deference (i.e., conformity and tradition), and, unexpectedly, were male. Interview privacy corresponded to lower acquiescence, but this association was small and vanished after including respondent characteristics. Unexpectedly, acquiescence was higher in interviewees who showed a stronger interest in the interview. Finally, acquiescence was considerably higher in countries with stronger social norms of deference. We discuss implications of these findings for the validity of research based on self-report data and delineate how our framework can guide future inquiries into acquiescent responding.

Relationships between Personality and Cognitive Ability: A Facet-Level Analysis.

A growing body of research supports the notion that cognitive abilities and personality are systematically related. However, this research has focused largely on global personality dimensions and single-often equally global-markers of cognitive ability. The present study offers a more fine-grained perspective. Specifically, it is one of the first studies to comprehensively investigate the associations between both fluid and crystallized intelligence with Big Five personality domains as well as their facets. Based on a heterogeneous sample of the adult population in Germany (N = 365), our study yielded three key findings. First, personality was more strongly related to crystallized intelligence than to fluid intelligence. This applied both to the total variance explained and to the effect sizes of most of the Big Five domains and facets. Second, facets explained a larger share of variance in both crystallized and fluid intelligence than did domains. Third, the associations of different facets of the same domain with cognitive ability differed, often quite markedly. These differential associations may substantially reduce-or even suppress-the domain-level associations. Our findings clearly attest to the added value of a facet-level perspective on the personality-cognitive ability interface. We discuss how such a fine-grained perspective can further theoretical understanding and enhance prediction.

Cognitive ability, acquiescence, and the structure of personality in a sample of older adults.

Acquiescence, or the tendency to respond to descriptions of conceptually distinct personality attributes with agreement/affirmation, constitutes a major challenge in personality assessment. The aim of this study was to shed light on cognitive ability as a potential source of individual differences in acquiescent responding. We hypothesized that respondents with lower cognitive ability exhibit stronger acquiescent response tendencies than respondents with higher cognitive ability and that this leads to problems in establishing the Big Five structure by means of principal component analyses (exploratory factor analysis was not applicable to these data) in the former group. Further, we hypothesized that after controlling for acquiescence by using mean-corrected instead of raw item scores, the Big Five structure holds even among respondents with lower cognitive ability. Analyses in a sample of 1,071 German adults aged 56 to 75 years using the Digit Symbol Substitution Test as a measure of cognitive ability and the BFI-10, a 10-item abbreviated version of the Big Five Inventory, as a measure of personality, corroborated these hypotheses. These findings suggest that lower cognitive ability and age-related declines in cognitive functioning more specifically are associated with higher acquiescence, which in turn leads to problems in establishing the Big Five structure among individuals with lower cognitive ability that should be addressed by controlling for acquiescence.

The impact of acquiescence on the evaluation of personality structure.

Acquiescence, or the tendency to respond to descriptions of conceptually distinct personality attributes with agreement/affirmation (acceptance acquiescence) or disagreement/opposition (counter-acquiescence), has been widely recognized as a source of bias that can substantially alter interitem correlations within scales. Acquiescence is also known to operate differently among some groups of persons; it is, for example, more pronounced among individuals with less formal education. Consequently, the biasing effects of acquiescence are of particular concern when the dimensionality underlying the item set of a measure is examined with representative samples comprised of persons with varying levels of educational attainment and evaluated with correlation-based statistical methods such as factor analysis. In the present study, we extended our earlier research by investigating the biasing effect of acquiescence on personality factor structures derived from the full-scale version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) when administered to a large sample (N = 1,427) selected to be representative of Germany's adult population. Consistent with previous findings based on a short-scale version of the BFI, factor analyses of the unadjusted BFI item set failed to replicate the expected Big Five-factor structure in the low/medium and high educational groups, with distortions in factor structure more pronounced in the former group. Once acquiescence was controlled in the item responses for both groups, however, the obtained factor structures were consistent with the Big Five framework. The implications of acquiescence on the evaluation of the factor structure of personality inventories and for the validity of personality assessments are discussed.

The measurement equivalence of Big Five factor markers for persons with different levels of education.

Previous findings suggest that the Big-Five factor structure is not guaranteed in samples with lower educational levels. The present study investigates the Big-Five factor structure in two large samples representative of the German adult population. In both samples, the Big-Five factor structure emerged only in a blurry way at lower educational levels, whereas for highly educated persons it emerged with textbook-like clarity. Because well-educated persons are most comparable to the usual subjects of psychological research, it might be asked if the Big Five are limited to such persons. Our data contradict this conclusion. There are strong individual differences in acquiescence response tendencies among less highly educated persons. After controlling for this bias the Big-Five model holds at all educational levels.