Conscientiousness is robustly associated with academic performance across primary, secondary, and tertiary education, with openness the next strongest predictor¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2023 · checked against its sources 2026-10-22 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? Conscientiousness is robustly associated with academic performance across education levels, and openness to experience is the next strongest predictor of academic performance. → Hayley K. Jach 2023

Evidence¶

Hayley K. Jach 2023¶

Hayley K. Jach, Lisa Bardach, Kou Murayama. (2023). How Personality Matters for Education Research. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09807-4

q2 · i? · review · r2

Narrative review reporting, citing Spielmann et al. (2022), that "conscientiousness is robustly associated with academic performance" across education levels; the review attributes this to prior meta-analytic literature it did not re-synthesise.

"conscientiousness is robustly associated with academic performance across primary, secondary, and tertiary education (see Spielmann et al., 2022, for a review)"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

Personality Traits — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Conscientiousness shows the strongest links to SRL and robustly predicts academic performance even after accounting for cognitive ability — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Of the Big Five personality traits, only conscientiousness (r = .22) and openness (r = .13) correlate appreciably with mathematics achievement — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
A reduced set of non-cognitive factors alone explains 17–25% of the variance in university GPA across three years of a degree — related
Stable Dispositions such as conscientiousness predict academic success partly through effort, with some independence from cognitive ability — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Mathematics achievement correlates more strongly with learners' knowledge, skills and cognitive abilities than with their personality traits, goals or emotions — related
Conscientiousness is a reliable meta-analytic predictor of academic achievement — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`claim`
`id`	`conscientiousness-predicts-academic-performance-review`
`title`	`Conscientiousness is robustly associated with academic performance across primary, secondary, and tertiary education, with openness the next strongest predictor`
`description`	`Conscientiousness is robustly associated with academic performance across primary, secondary, and tertiary education, with openness the next strongest predictor`
`status`	`review`
`evidence_strength`	`weak`
`newest_evidence`	`2023`
`source_checked`	`2026-10-22`
`generated`	by `process:wiki-ingest` on `2026-10-22`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
`sources`	1 — `hayley-k-jach-2023`

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