Aberrant personality tendencies and academic success throughout engineering education.

OBJECTIVE: In a longitudinal field study, we investigated the predictive associations between six aberrant personality tendencies (antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, schizotypal, obsessive-compulsive, avoidant) and academic success of STEM students.

METHOD: Bachelor students of Industrial Engineering at a Dutch technical university (N = 432, Mage  = 18.45; 87.3% male) filled out the NEO-PI-R and aberrant tendencies were operationalized by the five-factor model compound technique. Indicators of academic achievement (grades) and persistence (credit points earned per year, re-enrollment, study duration) were made available by the academic office.

RESULTS: Validities across the three years of the study program consistently support the role of two aberrant tendencies: Individuals with high antisocial tendency reached lower academic achievement, took longer to finish their study, and had a higher risk of drop out. The obsessive-compulsive tendency was associated with higher grade-point-average, faster study progress, and higher retention rates and effects were still visible while controlling for known predictors (high school grades, Conscientiousness). Contrary to our expectations, we found no evidence for inverted U-shape relationships.

CONCLUSIONS: We used the compound technique for aberrant tendencies based on the five-factor model in the academic context and our findings support the importance of personality-based psychopathological tendencies for academic success. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.