Academic Success and the Impact of the Personality

Personality and Academic Success

Personality is very important to academic success. Everyone has a unique personality and he or she must identify it in order to know what is the best method for to study. Learning approaches are not the same for everyone, because of differences and personality is a major factor in that. As Kiss, Kotsis and Kun (2014) note, there is a relationship between intelligence, personality style and academic success: indeed, one's success in school is "significantly influenced by the sex, intellectual intelligence, introvert or extrovert orientation ...and personality preference of the student" (p. 23). This paper will show how personality, by serving as the foundation and framework of the learning process, impacts academic performance.

Everyone has a personality that consists of traits, different levels of intelligence, emotional intelligence, expressiveness, degrees of intro- and extraversion, and so on. While these personality characteristics do not necessarily define a person, they do qualify that individual's ability to conduct appropriate levels of connectivity in a classroom setting with the required learning material, the professor, and other students (Cacamis, Asmar, 2014). For example, if a student in introverted by nature, it may be that he or she does not engage with other students on the same level as a student who is extroverted. If an assignment calls for teamwork, the introverted student will most likely be more of a leader in the situation and show different skills. The extrovert might show more emotional intelligence on the other hand. The personality does not say that one student is better than the other. It only gives a description of the type of character and capabilities that student might possess. There is nothing stopping an introvert from stepping up and being a good leader, so long as he develops the traits of leadership within himself to use them in a situation like this. Personalities come with strong suits and they can be used for support of academic performance, but they also have drawbacks which should be paid attention to because they can act as barriers in the learning process. For example, the extrovert might feel comfortable as a natural leader but he or she might lack the necessary level of emotional intelligence to be an effective leader.

There are many theories about how emotional intelligence and personality can impact things like leadership (Avolio, Walumbwa, Weber, 2009), but the research on how personality impacts academic performance by acting as the infrastructure of the learning process is made clear by Kanfer, Wolf, Kantrowitz, and Ackerman (2010) who show that a personal ability combined with personality traits are effective predictors of academic performance, indicating that a "whole person assessment" is helpful in identifying expectations of a person's achievement (p. 64). Essentially, the whole person is what is the total sum of the parts -- intelligence, personality traits, self-concept, motivation, interest, EI, etc. -- and all of it combines to give the major picture of the individual student.