Conscientiousness And Academic Deviances

Every individual has a unique set of traits and behaviours that make up his/her personality. Psychological traits refer to the many salient dispositions within a person throughout his/her lifespan (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2011). The levels of these traits vary in each individual and therefore, individual differences exist. Such examples of these individual differences include people’s thinking styles, their verbal abilities, their temperament, the ways they process information and their learning styles. Personality and individual differences in turn influence the outcomes of people’s lives.

Personality assessment batteries have been created in order to understand individuals and highlight their personality characteristics. They measure which traits

(2010) researched how personality and individual differences correlated with academic deviances such as plagiarism. A negative correlation was found between conscientiousness and academic deviances. Therefore, one can conclude that low levels of conscientiousness is a possible explanation for students plagiarising work resulting in failure.

Being successful academically is not only important for employment and salary purposes but also for well being. Academic failure throughout one’s education can have damaging effects on certain individuals causing them to feel helpless and vulnerable. Each failure can result in feelings of stress, anxiety and negative emotions towards academic lessons. This may be an explanation for Kuncel et al. (2010)’s findings about how personality attributes have more of an effect on later academic performance and grades rather than earlier grades.

Although, conscientiousness is the most salient trait associated with academic success, its relevance is not limited to this domain as it is salient in terms of occupational success and health

I scored at or near the class average mean for optimism, mastery, shyness, and health locus. However, I scored lower than the class average, male average and female average on embarrassment (z=-.52), conscientiousness (z=-.69) and openness (z=-.47). I scored very high on emotional stability (z=1.73, nearly two standard deviations above the mean). I also scored higher than all other means on extraversion (z=+.51), and agreeableness (z=.82). My score on the information processing dimension of social intelligence was quite a bit higher (.78) than my scores on the social skills (z=.02) and social awareness (z=.18) dimensions of social intelligence. My z score on extraversion is more than one point lower than my z score on agreeableness and therefore, I am more extraverted than embarrassed. My z score on agreeableness is more than one point higher than my score on conscientiousness and therefore, I am more kind and sympathetic than careful and vigilant.

From these results I can summarise that I am a sociable, enthusiastic, compassionate person who is very relaxed. However at times, I lack organisation, creativity and efficiency. This is an accurate reflection of my personality as the lower level of conscientiousness may be the reason why I defer assignments until the last