A Comparison of the Relationship of Personality Traits to Academic Performance for African-American and Caucasian College Students

The topic of this literature review is research on differences between African-American and Caucasian students in the relationship between personality traits and collegiate academic performance as operationalized by cumulative grade-point-average (GP A). The first purpose of this review is to investigate which personality traits are predictive of GP A; the second purpose is to investigate racial differences in personality assessment. The literature used addresses a range of personality assessments including the MMPI-2, the Five Factor Model, expectancy beliefs, and a host of newer assessments. All of the literature is original with its own studies. From the review of literature, it is concluded that there are personality traits that can predict GP A. Racial differences were also found when looking at certain personality measures, but there is some inconsistency in the literature on that issue. A Comparison of the Relationship of Personality Traits to Academic Perfonnance for AfricanAmerican and Caucasian College Students 3 Personality is the basis for explaining human behavior. Career placement, job satisfaction, leadership styles, dating and marriage preferences, learning styles, and levels of achievement can all be explained in terms of personality. More often than not, inferences are drawn based on personality measures that have been created by different forms of assessment. Most forms of assessments strive to be sensitive to racial and ethnic differences so that there results are not biased. This literature review investigated two issues regarding personality. The first issue of using personality traits to predict GP A and achievement was examined based on the available empirical literature. Personality traits have been found to relate to job and career success (Barrick & Mount, 1991) as well as academic performance (Lounsbury, et aI, in press). Some researchers (Ones & Viswesveran, 1996; Hogan & Roberts, 1996) assert that broad personality traits can effectively predict complex criteria like job performance. It is assumed that certain personality traits are more useful than others when trying to attain high scholastic achievement. It is the purpose of this literature review to find which personality traits predicts GPA's of adolescents and college students. The second issue under investigation is racial differences in personality assessment. This issue is of particular interest because most personality measures were developed primarily for use by Caucasians. As our society has become more diverse, the applicability of these measures should be questioned. It is logical to expect that people with different values, backgrounds, beliefs, and ethics would not respond in the same manner on a test. If that is so, then personality measures are not likely to be equally