On the prediction of academic performance with personality traits: A replication study

• This is a replication of a 2001 JRP study by Paunonen and Ashton.
• We compared personality traits against personality factors in predicting GPA.
• Traits of achievement motivation and intellectual curiosity predicted grades.
• Personality factors of Conscientiousness and Openness showed weaker results.
• It was trait-specific variance in the lower-level traits that added to prediction.

We describe a large sample study (N = 652) that had two purposes. The first was to replicate a previous study (Paunonen & Ashton, 2001a, Journal of Research in Personality) in which we showed that lower-level personality trait measures related to achievement motivation predict the academic success of university students. The second purpose was to test our earlier conclusion that such lower-level traits are frequently superior to broader personality factors for accuracy in prediction. Both purposes were met in this study, providing more evidence for our general claim that aggregating narrow personality trait measures into broad factor measures can sometimes have negative consequences regarding the prediction and understanding of important outcomes, including academic performance.