Two Forms of Social Inequality in Students' Socio-Emotional Skills: Do the Levels of Big Five Personality Traits and Their Associations With Academic Achievement Depend on Parental Socioeconomic Status?

Abstract: Some researchers and policymakers advocate a stronger focus on fostering socio-emotional skills in the hope of helping students to succeed academically, especially those who are socially disadvantaged. Others have cautioned that this might increase, rather than reduce, social inequality because personality traits conducive to achievement are themselves unevenly distributed in disfavor of socially disadvantaged students. Our paper contributes to this debate. Analyzing representative, large-scale data on 9,300 ninth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and using the Big Five personality traits as a measure of socio-emotional skills, we cast light on two related yet distinct aspects of social inequality in socio-emotional skills: First, do levels of personality traits conducive to achievement vary as a function of students' parental socioeconomic status (pSES)? Second, do the returns to personality traits in terms of trait-achievement relations vary as funct

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Frontiers in Psychology ; 12 (2021) ; 1-12

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Erziehung, Schul- und Bildungswesen

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2021
• Creator: Lechner, Clemens ; Bender, Jens ; Brandt, Naemi D. ; Rammstedt, Beatrice

Further information

• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.679438
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022090607230176543322
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:32 AM CEST