The Big 5 Personality Theory And Academic Motivation

The Big 5 trait personality theory has been developed during the 196o’s with various modifications up until today. The purpose of this paper is to look at the correlation between the Big 5 theory and academic motivation and performance, a very important area in our culture. This paper first looks at the history of the theory and lays out descriptions of the 5 factors within the theory; it then continues with three sections that show research and findings from elementary school to secondary school, post-secondary, and a mix of the two. The findings are as follows: there is indeed a relatively strong correlation between the Big 5 personality factors and academic performance, especially in regards to the conscientiousness and openness†¦show more content†¦Many times, students are shut off from certain opportunities unless they make the grade, such as being in the top 2 percent in law school. Dreams are made and crushed due to academic performance and one can become finan cially compromised or free due to their academic records in high school or college, for example. Thus, acknowledging and analyzing the role of personality towards predicting and contributing to academic success is more than appropriate and valuable. The Big Five personality traits and theory has strong correlations towards showing which traits positively or negatively influence academic motivation and performance, based on decades of research with consistently similar results and studies encompassing elementary school to college settings and students. The Big 5 Personality Theory This theory was not developed all of a sudden, but it took years of testing and analyzing large amounts of personality traits to get to a Big 5 theory. The theory was derived from Cattell’s work from the 1970’s. Norman was the one in charge of advancing this, resulting in the fact that â€Å"The Big –5 are commonly used because they combine the best of Cattell’s (1970) comprehensive list of personality traits with the best of Eysenck’s (1991) concise list.† Here is how the Big 5 works and their antonyms: extroversion vs. introversion, neuroticism vs.