Personality and its Role on Productivity in the University Student

Abstract
University students were examined to discover if one personality type over another was more productive in attaining higher education. This was examined using a personality inventory and a two-factor productivity scale. Twenty-two participants were given a personality inventory, demographic survey, and a number of tasks to complete. The ESTJ personality type was expected to be more productive than the other 15 personality types on the basis that ESTJ types are goal oriented, are interested in grades, and have a need to succeed. The results, however, proved to be insignificant. Interestingly though, the most productive group was very similar to the ESTJ personality type.


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Personality and its Role on Productivity in the University Student

Six hundred thousand students leave four year universities annually without receiving degrees (Porter, 2002). This means that six hundred thousand students per year give or take a few due to unforeseen causes, are finding university life unpleasant and are not being productive college students. Studies conducted by Cattell and Eysenck indicate that academic success is more attributed to personality type than intelligence (as cited in Sanchez, Rejano, & Rodriguez, 2001). According to Kathy Quinn (1999), people who are sensing-perceiving on the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) are historically unsuccessful in higher education ventures. However, several portraits of the ESTJ type seem to represent a model college student and therefore it seems the ESTJ personality type would fair better and be more production in higher education.

For example,
As young adults, they focus on their goals, both personal and professional. They build on education and career goals set earlier in life and do all that they can to make these goals become a reality. They seem to have less confusion or difficulty than some types in choosing a career or selecting a mate because they like focusing and making decisions (Hirsch & Kummerow).
In accordance the Portrait of an ESTJ (2000), states that ESTJ’s are take-charge people, with a tendency to focus in on details, and the put valiant effort into all that they are involved with. Following these definitions of an ESTJ, the most productive university student fits the profile of an ESTJ. These students complete their degrees at four year universities in a timely manner because they possess the ESTJ profile.

A description of each aspect of the ESTJ student is as follows: Extravert students like to speak freely with others about their ideas, work in groups, and enjoy variety and action in the classroom; Sensing students are creatures of tradition, use established approaches to problem solving, and work steadily; Thinking students prefer personal achievement, need to succeed, want to know the how’s and why’s of things, are interested in grades, and may actually like lectures; Judging students turn work in on time, have good study habits, and like to make decisions (UMIST Staff Development, n.d.). All of these traits wrapped into one personality type would lead to a successful college student.

Erlendsson (2001) states, “Productivity measurement isn’t an exact science.” The obstacle to tackle is how to measure the productivity of university students. (Hosseini, n.d.) implies that productivity is measured and defined by student learning. He also points out that academic schedules are much too often planned according to personal convenience rather than academic reasoning, and this leads to students spending more time and years in pursuit of a college degree (Hosseini, n.d.). Productivity, therefore, is down across college campuses. One of the reasons for the drop in productivity is because of the Information Age, and productivity being more an important outcome of school rather than during school (Erlendsson, 2001).

For the purpose of this research productivity will have two definitions since it is so hard to define. The first being productivity means the success of the university student (as in amount of learning) determined by a ratio of the number of years they have completed in higher education divided by the number of years they have been in the higher education system working toward a degree. This should provide an accurate picture of how the student is spending their time while attaining higher education. The second definition of productivity will deal with a timed task based productivity scale. The scale will use a ratio of how many tasks were successfully completed out of the total number of tasks available to complete. These two definitions of productivity should create a balance and give a fair judgment of the students’ actual productivity. Using this productivity scale should give an accurate measure of how personality affects scholastic productivity. Using productivity to determine the successfulness of students will help further the evidence provided which indicates that the ESTJ university students are more equipped to be successful university students, therefore it is expected that ESTJ students are more productive than the other 15 personality types indicated by the MBTI.

Method

Participants

Twenty-two junior and senior undergraduate psychology majors enrolled in Research Methods and Psychological Statistics classes at Georgia Southern University took part in the study. Four males and 18 females from the estimated ages of 18-24 took part in the study. All participation was strictly volunteered. Course credit as well as extra credit for participating in the experiment was given. Participation required approximately 15 minutes. All participants were treated ethically and fairly by the experimenter.

Materials

The timed task to determine the first aspect of productivity included students completing a sheet of 50 simple addition and subtraction problems with a time limit of three minutes to complete the task. For this portion of the experiment a stop watch or clock was needed to time the participants. The number of tasks completed successfully will be divided by the number of possible tasks, yielding the result of one as a perfect score on the timed task. The score on this task based scale was then added to the score on the demographic survey explained below.
Personality type was determined by the MBTI. This test is designed to group people into 16 possible personality types. These personality types can be out of the following categories: extraverts vs. introverts (E vs. I), sensers vs. intuitives (S vs. I), thinking vs. feeling (T vs. F), and perceivers vs. judgers (P vs. J). These types were theorized by Carl Jung which then led to the development of the MBTI (Argyle, 2000). The MBTI is a very widely used and excepted form of personality prediction. It is used across many disciplines which is why it works well in this study. Participants were given a short version (68 questions) of the personality test (Personality Test, 2003).

A four question demographic survey was used to determine the second aspect of productivity. Two questions were asked about the participants GPA (grade point average) and the participant’s gender. These questions were just for general information and were not used to calculate the results of the study. The other two questions provided the information needed to calculate the productivity aspect explained below. The number of years they have been in school is defined by the actual years and the number of years they have completed is determined by class rank. Freshman receive a year score of one, sophomores two, juniors three, and seniors four. So, for example, Bobby has been attending college since 1999 and he is a sophomore. His productivity score would be 0.4. This formula allowed for a score of one to be perfect productivity, therefore a score of one is the most productive. This score was added to the task productivity score explained above, yielding productivity scores ranging from 0-2, with 2 being the highest available score attainable.

Procedure
Participants in which volunteered for the study arrived at their specified time and room number. They seated themselves and were given their informed consent. The participants then signed the sign-in sheet to ensure they would receive either course credit or extra credit for volunteering to participate in the study. The participants were then given the 50 simple addition and subtraction problems face down and instructed to complete as many of the problems as they could in the given time limit of three minutes. The clock was started and participants turned over the sheet of paper containing the tasks and began the problems. Time was called after exactly three minutes and the participants were instructed to stop writing and turn the paper over.

The next segment in the experiment was for the participants to fill out the personality survey. The participants were encouraged to answer the questions to the best of their ability and answer all 68 questions to ensure accurate results. The results from the personality survey then assigned them into their group. All participants were given the same personality inventory, therefore all participants had an equal and fair chance to be assigned to their correct personality group as assigned by the personality inventory.

After the personality test was completed individually, the experimenter then gave the participants the demographic survey. They were instructed to answer honestly and completely all four questions. After this last segment was completed, the participants were then instructed to fold all three items together and turn them in. In exchange for the three items from the participants, the experimenter gave them a written debriefing statement explaining the purpose of the experiment and what their participation might help researchers learn. The participants were thanked and then released.

Results

The data were analyzed using a one-way between groups analysis of variance, with the level of alpha set at .05. The mean productivity throughout the eight levels of the independent variable, personality type, was 1.45 (SD=.24) with N=22. There was no significant difference between the independent variables (personality type) with respect to the dependent variable (productivity) with F (7, 14) =.809. As shown in Table 1, however, the personality group with the highest mean productivity was ENFP (extraverted-intuitive-feeling-perceiver) with 1.66 (SD=.36) with n=2. The personality group with the lowest productivity was INTP (introverted-intuitive-thinking-perceiver) with 1.15 (SD=0) with n=1. More people had the ESTJ and ISFJ (introverted-sensers-feeling-judging) personality types than any of the other levels of the independent variable with an n=5, respectively the groups had means of 1.41 (SD=.24) and 1.36 (SD=.22) The INTJ (introverted-intuitive-thinking-judging) group had a mean of 1.40 (SD=.04) with n=2, the ENFJ (extraverted-intuitive-feeling-judging) group had a mean of 1.49 (SD=.16) with n=3, the ESFJ (extraverted-senser-feeling-judging) group had a mean of 1.63 (SD=.34) with n=3, and the INFP (introverted-intuitive-feeling-perceiver) group had a mean of 1.44 (SD=0) with n=1.

Discussion

Although no significant effects were found for personality type, there were some interesting results that came out of the data. The two most prevalent personality types which showed up in the data were the ESTJ and the ISFJ groups. Both groups were below the mean for productivity although. Since only psychology majors were involved in the experiment you could say that these two personality types, though not on the highly productive side of things, could be correlated with the psychology profession. The ESTJ group was hypothesized to be the most productive group in the experiment, and even though it was not it is interesting that it was tied to be the most prevalent group in the study.

Also interesting is the fact that the most productive group was the ESFJ group, which is almost identical to the ESTJ group except in the feeling-thinking category. This could be again because the sample was limited to psychology majors; many of the people have chosen psychology as a career because they are feelers instead of thinkers.

Two of the groups in the data, INFP and INTP, held only one participant. For this reason the data collected here is not entirely sufficient. If more participants had shown up in this group, then the data might be able to reflect more of the entire population of university students. However, having at least 8 out of the 16 possible personality types showing up in the data was surprisingly good for such a small sample.

On that note, the insufficient sample size and the narrow choice of possible subjects for the study did not accurately portray how personality actually affects productivity. If a researcher were to try and replicate this study, suggestions would be as follows: have a broader range of university students from different majors and all in all a larger sample size to ensure representatives from each personality type.

On the topic of productivity, as noted in the research by Erlendsson (2001), measuring productivity is a hard thing to do. For this reason, it makes coming up with a good scale very intimidating. Using the math problems has advantages as well as disadvantages. One reason being some students are better at math than others no matter what their personality type is. A better task based scale should be used in further research or use of something to balance this extraneous variable out would be efficient.

In summary, this research provides an interesting look into what personality type makes a productive university student. Although, the data proved to have no significance, some interesting information stood out concerning what personality types are most prevalent in the major of psychology and the fact that the group which was hypothesized to be more productive than the other groups had only one small difference to the group which proved to be the most productive in the sample, however, with no significance.

References

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