The influences of the Big Five personality traits on academic achievements: Chain mediating effect based on major identity and self-efficacy (2024)

2.1. Effects of personality traits on academic achievement

Much of the literature shows that personality traits affect individual education level and academic achievement. Kifer (1975) was the first to explore the relationship between personality traits and academic achievement: at the same time, he also discussed the family factors in the formation of personality traits. Cunha et al. (2010) estimated the influences of cognitive ability and personality characteristics on the education level of adolescents and found that both explained the difference of 16% and 12% in the sample’s level of education respectively. Vedel (2014) summed up the 2l categories of empirical research into the “Big Five” personality characteristics and average performance (GPA) and demonstrated that the significant positive impact of conscientiousness is reflected in all the studies, while the negative impact of emotional stability is relatively common. In addition, some studies found that agreeableness and openness have certain positive impact on average performance, but the significance is weak, while extraversion has no significant impact. Noftle and Robins (2007) showed that personality traits exert different effects on the scores of psychology majors and non-psychology majors in a study using data about American undergraduates. For psychology majors, strictness has the greatest positive impact, followed by openness, emotional stability, and agreeableness. For students with all majors, the positive effects of strictness and openness are still steady, while the effects of other personality traits are no longer significant. The influences of personality characteristics on academic performance may be related to the major studied. On this basis, the scholars further investigated the influences of some more specific personality characteristics on learning achievement. Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham (2003) found that professionalism, sense of responsibility and self-discipline under a strict dimension have a particularly significant impact on the level of education. Students with high-level ability in these aspects are more likely to emerge in the class. Duckworth and Seligman (2005) also proved that the difference in average scores that self-discipline can explain is more than twice of IQ, and after controlling IQ and previous average scores, the effect of self-discipline remains significant.

2.2. The influence mechanism of personality traits on academic achievement

While more evidence show that personality traits can have an important impact on students’ academic achievements, researchers have begun to pay attention to the reasons and mechanisms behind this phenomenon. There are mainly two different paths. One is represented by economists, who believe that the level of personality traits with certain characteristics or dimensions is regarded as another kind of human capital different from traditional human capital such as cognitive ability, namely new human capital, or can be called non-cognitive ability. In this way of thinking, researchers pay more attention to the different characteristics of individual thinking and ways of doing things that personality traits can imbue, as well as the resulting different academic achievements. The most important research object of this feature is self-efficacy.

Relevant research results indicate that academic self-efficacy plays an intermediary role in the relationship between conscientiousness or openness in the Big Five personality and academic achievement (Laura et al., 2013). Although there is a difference between the two: general self-efficacy is at the top, which refers to an individual’s general belief that he can successfully deal with challenges from different environments or deal with new things (Li et al., 2019); however, academic self-efficacy is at the bottom, which refers to a specific belief that an individual can successfully complete academic tasks (Wang and Miao, 2012). Caprara et al. (2011) used the data of Italian junior and senior high school students to verify the influence and mechanism of Big Five personality traits and self-efficacy on their academic achievements. Openness and self-efficacy can improve students’ academic achievements, which in turn can improve their self-efficacy and form a positive interaction. However, students need not only cope with the challenges brought about by their studies, but also to face the influence of interpersonal relationships. The study found that parent-child relationship and dormitory interpersonal relationship can significantly predict college students’ academic achievement (Pan and Gao, 2017; Chen, 2018). Therefore, individuals’ belief in their ability to meet different environmental challenges can better describe the relationship with academic achievement.

Previous studies have shown that personality can predict individual self-efficacy. Studies by Jin Dan et al. found that among the five factors of Big Five personality, extraversion, emotional stability and openness have a significant positive correlation with college students’ sense of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Jin and Huang, 2019). When studying the relationship among academic procrastination, personality and general self-efficacy of junior high school students, Jason Zhang discovered that general self-efficacy is positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, openness and caution, and negatively correlated with emotional stability, (Jason, 2012) Shen Zhengfu et al. found that there is a significant positive correlation between introversion and self-efficacy in college students’ personality traits, while there is a significant negative correlation between emotional stability and self-efficacy (Shen et al., 2013).

In addition, general self-efficacy can positively predict students’ academic achievements. In fact, students’ sense of self-efficacy is more predictive of their academic achievement than academic factors closely related to academic achievement, such as learning motivation (Cao and Zhang, 2013). Previous studies implied that academic self-efficacy is a certain belief and cognition of college students towards their studies, and there is a certain correlation between academic self-efficacy and their academic achievements (Ke et al., 2015). General self-efficacy is found to positively predict students’ academic achievements (Du et al., 2010; Yang, 2016).

2.3. Impact of major identity on self-efficacy

In addition to considering personality traits as a universal ability, psychologists and educators are more inclined to regard personality traits as a neutral feature. There is no distinction between high and low, but depends on different cultures, organizations, positions and the degree of matching between professional and individual personality traits. Therefore, educators are eager to study which personality traits can achieve better results for a specific class of professional students. Under the guidance of this thought, researchers generally employ major identity to reflect the degree of matching between students and majors and use this as antecedent variable to study the impact on academic self-efficacy, academic input, academic achievement and other results.

On the one hand, many studies have shown that college students’ major identity is closely related to their learning input. As Chen (2013) pointed out, for normal university students, the more they identify with their major, the more willing they are to study hard. Research by Wang and Sun (2015) shows that medical college students have medium major identity and average learning input; moreover, the more they identify with their major, the harder they study. Emotional major identity has the greatest predictive effect on learning input, that is, the more college students like their major, the more time and energy they spend on their professional study. A survey conducted by Liu et al. (2014) found that college students who study clinical medicine are more invested in their studies and are more satisfied with their major, and there is a significant positive correlation between the two. Cui (2013) found that college students’ evaluation and views of their majors, professional emotions and feelings about how well their majors match their own conditions will all affect their efforts when studying and learning. The more students identify with their majors, the more they like to learn, and the more they invest in learning. Zhang and Wang (2018) also revealed a positive correlation between their major identity and learning input in the study of free normal students in special education, i.e. normal students with stronger value identity for their major, higher receptiveness to teaching and higher self-efficacy will invest more energy and time in professional learning. These studies show that major identity can positively predict the learning input of college students. This is mainly because the current college education is mainly professional education, and major identity is the basis of learning. The deeper the college students’ understanding of their major and the more positive their emotional experience, the more conscious their professional learning behavior will be, and then they will be more actively involved in learning and be happy.

On the other hand, major identity can affect the individual’s emotion, thinking and behavior. When the individual’s major identity is stronger, it will generate more willingness to demonstrate professional values and hold a positive evaluation on their own professional knowledge and skills, to improve the individual’s sense of self-efficacy. Combining the research on the relationship between major identity and self-efficacy at home and abroad, most of them are specifically aimed at medical and nursing college students. The results show that the two are significantly correlated. For example, Tao (2016) conducted a survey on the nursing major of the five-year higher vocational education and found that the students with stronger sense of self-efficacy had higher major identity. Li and Jiang (2012) investigated the self-efficacy of undergraduate nursing students and found that students with higher self-efficacy also had higher major identity, and the more they liked their major, the higher their professional skills, and they would also attempt to find positive solutions to the difficulties in professional learning. Ma and Cao’s (2016) survey of medical freshmen shows that there is a two-way positive correlation between major identity and self-efficacy, i.e. the more college students accept their major, the stronger their self-efficacy; moreover, college students with stronger sense of self-efficacy have more confidence in their major and more recognition of their major. The two affect and promote each other. Han (2014) also found that the higher the level of major identity, the stronger the self-efficacy of college students. Other scholars added the third variable to examine the relationship between major identity, self-efficacy and other variables. For example, Qie (2014) discovered that major identity not only affects self-efficacy, but also influences their achievement motivation together with self-efficacy. The aforementioned research results show that major identity and self-efficacy affect each other, which is mainly because if a college student has a strong will to his major and future career, they will fully tap his potential, highly trust his professional skills and improve their self-efficacy.

From this literature review, personality traits can be seen to have a significant impact on students’ academic performance, which has become a more common consensus in the academic community. The mechanism of this impact mainly comes from two aspects: the improvement of academic achievement brought by certain personality traits proposed under the new human capital theory; the other is the psychological and spiritual incentive effect brought by the matching of personality traits with certain majors. In these two paths, personality traits will affect students’ final academic achievement through their self-efficacy, but the relationship between them is unclear. In addition, the matching model between personality traits and professional characteristics is also a complex problem, therefore, this study mainly focuses on a specific class of professional students, avoiding the complicated problem of the matching relationship between personality traits and majors, and focusing on discussing the results of major identity formed by students’ personality traits in a specific professional background, and aiming at the double intermediary chain effect between major identity and self-efficacy, in an attempt to provide new empirical evidence related to this topic.

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4.1. Research data

The data used in this study were collected from a questionnaire survey conducted by a business school of a university in Beijing in 2022 for sophom*ores and juniors. Using this data has several advantages: first, the sample is highly concentrated in terms of age structure and basic ability, which can avoid the interference of many unnecessary factors and reduce the risk of missing variables; secondly, the samples are in the same academic environment, which can make the effect model of personality traits on academic performance more evident; thirdly, it can enable us to discuss the impact matching relationship between students’ personality traits and business majors in a single business major background, simplifying our research.

4.2. Research variables

The key variables of the data used in this study are shown in Table 1. Among them, the students’ academic achievement is obtained by the students themselves evaluating the ranking results of their academic achievements in the major and conducting reverse value selection. The higher the value of this variable, the higher the ranking of the major that the students evaluate. The Big Five Personality Scale adopted the classic five-factor personality scale (NEO-FFI, NEO Five-Factor Inventory), with a total of 60 items (McCrae and Costa, 1991) Major identity is measured using the “College students’ major identity scale” developed by Qin (2009), with 23 items, which are divided into four dimensions: appropriateness, cognition, behavior, and emotionality, among which appropriateness refers to the degree to which students think they are suitable for the major, cognition refers to the degree to which students know their major, behavior refers to the degree to which students work hard to learn that major, and emotionality refers to the degree to which students’ take their approval of their chosen major to heart (the detailed questionnaire survey items could be seen in the Appendix). With reference to the academic self-efficacy scale compiled by Liang and Zhou (2000), academic self-efficacy is divided into two independent dimensions: ability efficiency and behavioral efficacy. Ability efficiency refers to an individual’s estimation of whether they have the ability to complete studies, achieve good results and avoid academic failure; behavioral efficacy refers to the students’ evaluation of whether their learning behavior can achieve their learning goals, and is the estimation of their behavior results. The control variables include demographic variables such as gender, as well as variables such as physical and mental health level, registered permanent residence type, parents’ education level, family economic level, only child, professional entry mode, and college entrance examination enrolment area that may affect academic achievement.

4.3. Test of reliability and validity of the scale

The reliability and validity of each measurement variable are tested, and the items with low factor load and independent residuals are removed. The reliability and validity results of the items retained are shown in Table 2. It can be seen that the Cronbach α coefficient of each variable is basically above 0.8, χ2/df basically less than 5, the TLI and CFI are basically greater than 0.9, the RMSEA is basically less than 0.09, and the SRMR is basically less than 0.05. The retained items have good hom*ogeneity reliability and structural validity.

4.4. Variable description statistics

The results are shown in Tables 3 and ​and4:4: the mean value of the academic achievement of the explained variables is close to 50, and the overall distribution is close to normal distribution without significant deviation. The key variables affecting the Big Five personality traits, major identity and academic self-efficacy have similar distribution, and the traits are good; the distribution of the control variables is also very consistent with the overall distribution of the schools and colleges where the sample is located. The sample is of good quality and can reflect the overall situation of the students in the schools and colleges.

5.1. Influence of personality traits on key variables

The effects of personality traits on academic performance, major identity and self-efficacy are shown in Table 5, among which the first and second columns show the effects of personality traits on academic achievement, the third and fourth columns show the effects of personality traits on major identity, and the fifth and sixth columns show the effects of personality traits on self-efficacy. The direct effects of each dimension of personality traits on the three outcome variables are significantly different. Among them, emotional stability has no significant impact on major identity, self-efficacy and academic performance. This is not the same as the research results pertaining to new human capital. Generally, the research results tend to think that individuals with stronger emotional stability can obtain better employment results and higher income: however, if considered only from academic performance, emotional stability is not significantly related to individual ability and academic achievement. Both extraversion and conscientiousness have significant positive effects on major identity and self-efficacy, but the direct effect on academic achievement is no longer significant, although the sign is positive, which also implies the inconsistency with the mainstream research conclusions. Openness has a strong positive effect on major identity, but a weak effect on self-efficacy; agreeableness has a negative effect on major identity and academic achievement.

5.2. Analysis of single mediating effect

5.3. Chain mediating effect of major identity and self-efficacy

5.4. Heterogeneity test

6.1. Key conclusions

In this study, business majors in domestic colleges and universities were taken as the research object, and the influences of the Big Five personality traits on their academic performance were evaluated. Based on the verification of the single mediating effect of major identity and self-efficacy, the chain mediating effect from major identity to self-efficacy was tested, and the following main conclusions were found:

Emotional stability has neither general effect nor direct effect on academic achievement, nor mediating effect of major identity or self-efficacy, which differs from the impact of this personality dimension on labor market results. It can be concluded that the more the work or affairs that value personal ability and achievements, the less the impact of this personality dimension;

Both extraversion and conscientiousness have a positive overall effect on students’ academic achievements, but they are mainly achieved through the mediating effect of self-efficacy and the chain mediating effect from professional identification to self-efficacy, and are mainly achieved through the mediating effect of self-efficacy, and are mainly realized through the dimension of behavioral efficacy;

Openness can also affect academic achievement through self-efficacy mediating effect and major identity to self-efficacy chain mediating effect, but the degree of influence is weak, and the total effect is insignificant;

The overall effect of agreeableness personality on academic achievement is negative, and it is mainly reflected through direct effect, which reflects that academic achievement does not seem to reflect students’ team ability and performance well;

There are significant differences in the results and mechanisms of the influences of male and female personality traits on academic achievement: male openness and extraversion have a negative direct impact on academic achievement, but they can also be compensated through major identity and self-efficacy improvement; both agreeableness and emotional stability have a negative effect on academic achievement, and the main performance is a direct effect. The direct and indirect effects of stringency are unobvious. Women’s extraversion and conscientiousness have a positive impact on academic achievement through independent mediating effect of self-efficacy and chain mediating effect of major identity to self-efficacy, while emotional stability, openness and agreeableness have no distinct direct or indirect effects on academic achievement.

6.2. Research limitations

This study also has many research limitations, for example, students’ academic achievements are mainly obtained through students’ self-assessment, which will inevitably be affected by students’ self-cognition bias, resulting in inaccurate results; On the other hand, the data sample size obtained in this study is small, and the robustness of the related conclusions needs to be verified in a wider range of research; Thirdly, this study only tested the results of business majors, while the matching relationship and model between personality traits and professional characteristics have not been solved, which warrants further in-depth research in the future.

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