A commonly held belief is that fellow students are crucially important for academic achievement. Several studies have indeed shown that the grade point average, gender or origin of fellow students can influence one's own academic success.
Another widely held belief -confirmed by several studies- is that academic achievement depends on students’ own personality. In this study, we investigate whether personality of fellow students has an impact on academic performance.
In our study, we follow first-year students in a Dutch business school. At the beginning of their studies, the researchers collected four personality traits from all first-year students: self-confidence, emotional stability, risk taking, and persistence. The students are randomly assigned to small discussion classes of max. 15 students and randomly reassigned each teaching period. At the end of each teaching period, all students had to write the same exam.
The results show that students who ended up in classes with more persistent peers earned higher grades. This positive effect carries over to later teaching periods when students are reassigned to other classes. The self-confidence and emotional stability of fellow students, on the other hand, had no significant effect. Those who interacted with more risk-tolerant fellow students performed worse in the exam, although this effect does not spill over to future courses. The observed personality effects cannot be explained by different cognitive abilities, gender or nationality differences - factors that are also correlated with personality.
Since the benefits endure long-term, students grouped with persistent peers seem to be learning skills that are not limited to one course. In addition, these students are more likely to build a network of persevering peers, providing a foundation that can support them throughout their studies. Thus, any successful socio-emotional intervention on a set of students could have spillover benefits into their networks.
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