Big Five personality group differences across academic majors: A systematic review

By A. Vedel. 2016

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract During the past decades, a number of studies have explored personality group differences in the Big Five personality traits among students in different academic majors. To date, though, this research has not been reviewed systematically. This was the aim of the present review. A systematic literature search identified twelve eligible studies yielding an aggregated sample size of 13,389. Eleven studies reported significant group differences in one or multiple Big Five personality traits. Consistent findings across studies were that students of arts/humanities and psychology scored high on Neuroticism and Openness ; students of political sc. scored high on Openness ; students of economics, law, political sc., and medicine scored high on Extraversion ; students of medicine, psychology, arts/humanities, and sciences scored high on Agreeableness ; and students of arts/humanities scored low on Conscientiousness . Effect sizes were calculated to estimate the magnitude of the personality group differences. These effect sizes were consistent across studies comparing similar pairs of academic majors. For all Big Five personality traits medium effect sizes were found frequently, and for Openness even large effect sizes were found regularly. The results from the present review indicate that substantial personality group differences across academic majors exist. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4bf5f11612cd4f1a8d1ac832a2b3eabb06a78bf4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Blend Ibrahim
2. Steve Stewart-Williams
3. Ahmad Aljarah
4. L. Halsey

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Steve Stewart-Williams
2. L. Halsey

In Social Psychology

1. Blend Ibrahim
2. Steve Stewart-Williams
3. L. Halsey

Citations in the corpus

• Men, women and STEM: Why the differences and what should be done? (2020, background): “Note that there is little evidence that sex differences in the Big Five personality traits contribute to gender gaps in STEM (Lippa, 1998; Vedel, 2016).”
• Do Social Media Marketing Activities Enhance Consumer Perception of Brands? A Meta-Analytic Examination (2020, background): “…variance among studies is due to real differences in the magnitude of the effect size, only less than 5% of the observed variance would have been expected based on random error or it might come from moderators (Al Jarah & Emeagwali, 2017; Aljarah, Emeagwali, Ibrahim, & Ababneh, 2018; Vedel, 2016).”