Predicting school success: Comparing Conscientiousness, Grit, and Emotion Regulation Ability

Highlights

• Examine self-regulation traits and abilities predicting high school success.

• Success criteria included measures from school records and student-reports.

• Test predictive validity of Conscientiousness, Grit, and Emotion Regulation.

• Emotion Regulation Ability, but not Grit showed incremental validity.

Abstract

The present paper examines validity of three proposed self-regulation predictors of school outcomes – Conscientiousness, Grit and Emotion Regulation Ability (ERA). In a sample of private high school students (N = 213) we measured these constructs along with indices of school success obtained from records (rule violating behavior, academic recognitions, honors, and GPA) and self-reported satisfaction with school. Regression analyses showed that after controlling for other Big Five traits, all school outcomes were significantly predicted by Conscientiousness and ERA, but not Grit. The discussion focuses on the importance of broad personality traits (Conscientiousness; measure of typical performance) and self-regulation abilities (ERA; measure of maximal performance) in predicting school success.

Introduction

Achieving challenging goals – such as school success – requires willingness to control impulses and work hard, as well as the ability to manage emotions associated with goal pursuit. While it is clear that academic achievement is predicted by intellectual abilities (Poropat, 2009), it is less clear what is the predictive power of psychological attributes at the intersection of emotions, cognition and self-regulation. Conscientiousness – a personality trait that primarily describes impulse control and self-regulation of behavior (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008) – has been consistently related to academic achievement (Poropat, 2009). In this paper we test another two proposed predictors of school success – Grit and Emotion Regulation Ability (ERA). Grit is a lower-level personality trait in the domain of Conscientiousness (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). Both Conscientiousness and Grit describe typical everyday performance or behavior (how people generally behave). By contrast, ERA is an ability to reason about effectiveness of different emotion regulation strategies and describes maximal capacity for solving emotion-related problems (Brackett, Rivers, & Salovey, 2011). While both self-regulation traits (such as Conscientiousness and Grit) and ERA predict important outcomes (Brackett et al., 2011, Duckworth et al., 2007, Roberts, Walton, et al., 2005), they are only modestly and inconsistently correlated to each other (e.g., Day and Carroll, 2004, Lopes et al., 2003, Lopes et al., 2004).

Conscientiousness is the Big Five trait that “describes socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates task- and goal-related behavior” (p. 120, John et al., 2008). As a super-trait, Conscientiousness includes a number of lower-level traits or facets, such as self-control and perseverance (e.g., MacCann et al., 2009, Roberts, Chernyshenko, et al., 2005). Grit is a noncognitive personality trait involving persistence and long-term consistency of interests (Duckworth et al., 2007). As such, Grit is conceptually closely related to Conscientiousness; persistence, a major component of Grit has been identified as one of the facets of Conscientiousness in multiple studies (e.g., Hough and Ones, 2001, MacCann et al., 2009). Conscientiousness emerged as the personality trait most consistently and strongly correlated to academic success (Poropat, 2009), and initial studies of Grit showed relationships to various measures of academic achievement (Duckworth and Quinn, 2009, Duckworth et al., 2007).

In contrast to the personality traits of Conscientiousness and Grit, ERA is an ability (a component of emotional intelligence; Mayer & Salovey, 1997) and describes individual’s maximal capacity to evaluate emotion regulation strategies and to influence one’s affective experience and actions in ways that promote goal attainment in emotionally charged situations (e.g., presence of competing goals, experience of challenges or obstacles). This ability is distinct from personality traits describing a tendency toward positive or negative emotions (i.e., Extraversion and Neuroticism; Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, 2008) and rather describes the capacity to reason about a variety of emotions. The present study aims to examine the independent predictive power of Conscientiousness, Grit, and ERA in relation to measures of high school success.

Conscientiousness is a super-trait that encompasses a family of lower-level traits in the broad domain of self-regulation (John et al., 2008, Roberts et al., 2014). Analyses of trait adjectives and personality inventories define a range of lower-level Conscientiousness-related traits, with five traits identified in multiple studies: orderliness, self-control, industriousness, responsibility, and traditionalism (Roberts et al., 2014). Two most common traits are orderliness and industriousness (Roberts et al., 2014). Orderliness can be defined as “the overarching tendency to be prepared” (p. 1317, Roberts et al., 2014), which includes a predisposition toward neatness and planfulness, while industriousness describes a predisposition to be hard-working and persistent in the face of obstacles (Roberts et al., 2014). Developmental precursors of Conscientiousness, such as childhood impulsivity and delay of gratification, further support the conceptualization of Conscientiousness as a self-regulation trait (Roberts et al., 2014).

Conscientiousness is most commonly assessed using self-report inventories that ask about typical or average behavioral tendencies and preferences (e.g., tendency to be generally reliable and hardworking, liking order; John et al., 2008). Different personality inventories are based on different theoretical perspectives and thus assess a range of facets, but no single inventory assesses the whole breadth of the Conscientiousness domain (Roberts et al., 2014). Despite the imperfect correspondence in the facets measured by the various Big Five inventories, there is very strong convergence between Conscientiousness domain scores across measures (John et al., 2008), suggesting that these inventories adequately estimate a person’s position on the broad trait domain.

Conscientiousness is correlated with a variety of behaviors that require planning and self-control of behavior, such as smoking, excessive alcohol use, drug use, and violence (Roberts, Chernyshenko, et al., 2005, Roberts, Walton, et al., 2005). Furthermore, Conscientiousness is consistently related to school success across age and level of schooling, and largely independent of general intelligence (Poropat, 2009). Conscientiousness predicts school success across cultures (e.g., U.S.: Noftle & Robins, 2007; Estonia: Laidra, Pullmann, & Allik, 2007; Croatia: Bratko, Chamorro-Premuzic, & Saks, 2006) and it predicts achievement over tutors’ expectations of performance (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003) and prior achievement (Noftle & Robins, 2007).

Research suggests that both broad and lower-level traits predict important outcomes and that lower-level traits can be even more powerful predictors than broad traits (O’Connor and Paunonen, 2007). Roberts, Chernyshenko, et al. (2005) found that lower-level Conscientiousness facets had differential relationship with important criteria, such as work dedication and drug use, and that using these lower-level scales improved criterion validity over the use of broad trait measures. Similarly, when predicting academic achievement, several studies found the Achievement Striving facet of Conscientiousness to be more highly correlated with academic achievement than the broad trait of Conscientiousness (Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003, Paunonen, 1998, Paunonen and Ashton, 2001).

In this study we test whether the most recently proposed lower-level Conscientiousness trait of Grit improves criterion validity in relation to school success outcomes over the broad Conscientiousness domain. Grit was proposed as a Conscientiousness-related trait that combines consistency of interests and persistence in pursuit of long-term goals (Duckworth et al., 2007). The conceptualization of Grit as a lower-level trait in the Conscientiousness domain is supported both conceptually – with persistence being a component of Grit and emerging as a facet of Conscientiousness in some analyses (e.g., Hough and Ones, 2001, MacCann et al., 2009) – and also based on measurement overlap. A self-report scale assessing Grit asks questions about typical everyday behavior in relation to achievement goals (e.g., “I am a hard worker” and “New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones”; Duckworth and Quinn, 2009, Duckworth et al., 2007), similar to assessment of Conscientiousness (e.g., “Tends to be lazy”, reversed, and “Perseveres until the task is finished” on the Big Five Inventory Conscientiousness scale; John et al., 2008).

Grit predicted achievement-related outcomes, such as GPA and retention in the United States Military Academy (Duckworth et al., 2007), and it predicted academic success after controlling for educational aspirations and prior achievement (Strayhorn, 2013). In spite of its high correlation with Conscientiousness (rs between .70 and .77), Grit was a unique predictor of highest educational degree obtained and rankings in the National Spelling Bee (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009). The present paper contributes to the understanding of this newly proposed self-regulation trait by examining its predictive validity in relation to outcomes of high school success, as well as testing its discriminant and incremental validity in relation to the broad trait of Conscientiousness.

In addition to willingness to work hard, school success requires the ability to regulate emotions associated with social interactions and achievement-related experiences. Emotion regulation involves processes of monitoring and modifying emotional reactions in order to reach a goal, which can happen at any point in the emotion process, from selecting situations, changing situation appraisals, to modulating physiological and behavior reactions (Gross, 1998). Emotion regulation is necessary when one’s experienced emotions are distressing (e.g., when test anxiety can interfere with performance) or when they are positive, but distracting or overwhelming (e.g., when one cannot focus in class anticipating an exciting weekend trip). Successful emotion regulation involves understanding the consequences of different reactions in emotion-laden situations and having knowledge of effective strategies (Brackett et al., 2011).

Emotion regulation can be conceptualized in terms of typical behavior – people’s tendency to use different emotion regulation strategies on a daily basis – and also in terms of maximal performance – people’s capacity to reason about and identify effective strategies for influencing emotions. This distinction between typical and maximal performance is often made when comparing personality traits (defined as typical performance, how people generally behave) and intelligence (defined as maximal performance on ability tests; Goff & Ackerman, 1992). An example of emotion regulation conceptualized in terms of typical performance is the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003), which measures people’s tendency to engage in cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression on a daily basis. The questionnaire items are similar to those on personality trait inventories and ask how much respondents agree with statement like: “When I want to feel less negative emotion, I change the way I am thinking about the situation” (reappraisal) or “When I am feeling negative emotions, I make sure not to express them” (expressive suppression).

In this paper, we conceptualize ERA as maximal performance by measuring it with an ability test that describes hypothetical emotion-laden situations and asks respondents to evaluate the efficacy of different strategies in reaching a specified goal (Brackett et al., 2011). Defined as maximal performance, ERA is a component of emotional intelligence and distinct from personality traits (Brackett and Mayer, 2003, Day and Carroll, 2004). Across studies, maximal performance ERA was most consistently related to Agreeableness (rs between .20 and .40; Day & Carroll, 2004; Lopes et al., 2005, Lopes et al., 2003, Lopes et al., 2004) and Conscientiousness (rs between .20 and .30; Ameriks et al., 2009, Lopes et al., 2006, Lopes et al., 2003).

When measured as maximal performance, ERA is related to a host of cognitive and behavioral outcomes that promote self-regulation, such as more accurate affective forecasting (Dunn, Brackett, Ashton-James, Schneiderman, & Salovey, 2007), fewer negative social interactions at work and higher stress tolerance (Lopes et al., 2006), and productive investment behavior (Ameriks et al., 2009). The importance of ERA for school success has been investigated rigorously in early childhood and in the transition to elementary school (e.g., Denham et al., 2012, Graziano et al., 2007). ERA in preschool children was related to multiple measures of academic achievement in kindergarten and this relationship was mediated by behavioral self-regulation in the classroom (Howse, Calkins, Anastopoulos, Keane, & Shelton, 2003).

In older children and adolescents, ERA is commonly measured using ability tests. Among community college and middle school students, a positive correlation was found between ERA assessed by two different performance tests (Mayer, Salovey and Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test and Situational Test of Emotion Management for Youths) and GPA (MacCann, Fogarty, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2011). ERA was also significantly related to medical students’ performance in courses on communication and interpersonal sensitivity over 3 years (Libbrecht, Lievens, Carette, & Côté, 2013). The present paper furthers the research on the predictive and incremental validity of maximal performance ERA by comparing it to typical performance traits of Conscientiousness and Grit.

While there is ample empirical evidence for predictive validity of Conscientiousness, there is no sufficient research on the validity of Grit and ERA for predicting school outcomes. The generality of the findings is tested using multiple outcome measures from school records (rule violating behavior, academic honors, recognitions, GPA), as well as student self-reports of satisfaction with school. Fig. 1 depicts the model describing how different self-regulation attributes predict school outcomes. We hypothesize that personality traits and ERA will independently predict school outcomes. Conscientiousness and related traits describe typical behavior, such as one’s general level of diligence. ERA, on the other hand, reflects one’s maximal knowledge and reasoning ability about strategies to influence emotions in order to reach a goal (e.g., modulate experiences of test anxiety to enable successful performance). At times, the same behavior can be influenced by Conscientiousness-related traits and ERA (e.g., persisting on a task in the face of frustration).

Furthermore, we hypothesize that Grit will show significant zero-order correlations with school success, but that it will not have incremental validity over Conscientiousness. Unlike the rankings in the National Spelling Bee studied by Duckworth and colleagues (2007), for instance, where students have a long-term goal requiring commitment and focused practice in a single domain (studying word spelling), school success criteria like GPA are comprised of many shorter-term goals (e.g., doing well on quizzes and paper assignments) across multiple academic subjects. School success should thus be better predicted by a broad trait of Conscientiousness.