Skip to main content Skip to local navigation
Home » SoTL Research » Personality Differences Across Majors

Personality Differences Across Majors

ycn dots
  • “Significant differences were verified for Humility-Pride, favouring the Engineering and Computer Science group compared to the Nutrition ...one. Individuals showing this pair use to be ambitious and aggressive being, in addition, capable to subordinate their own interests to the group.” (p.608) “Regarding the Humility-Pride pair, Psychology students seem to be ambitious and individualist, being in the disposition to subordinate their personal interests to benefit the group at the same time.” (p.609) “As for results obtained by the analyses of differences by major, History of Art students distinguished significantly in the Suffering-Pleasure dimension, overcoming Engineering and Psychology, and surpassing even more Computer Science students.” (p.607)

  • “Students in the arts/humanities majors were high in openness to experience, business students scored lowest in emotionality, science students ...scored low in extraversion, and helping/child-focused students scored high in honesty– humility, extraversion, and emotionality.” (p.80) “As compared to other students, business students reported lower levels of honesty–humility and emotionality, and higher levels of extraversion. Science majors showed strong interests in analysis and organization, higher levels of conscientiousness, high scores in math ability, and reported the lowest levels of extraversion.” (p.84)

  • “The Dark Triad traits (i.e. narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) have been associated with the desire for power, status, and social ...dominance in the workplace, and these desires have been hypohtesized to draw Dark Triad individuals towards occupations affording such outcomes...Economics/business students had high Dark Triad scores and psychology students had the lowest Dark Triad scores.” (p.86)

  • “International business majors score significantly higher in achievement motivation than any other majors, and computer information ...systems (CIS) students score significantly lower than any other majors...Accounting majors score significantly higher in conformity than any other majors, CIS students are statistically the second highest, and economics students score significantly lower than any other majors, with international business students second lowest...Marketing majors score significantly higher than any other majors on extroversion, international business and hospitality and tourism management majors are statistically tied for the second highest; CIS students are lowest, followed by accounting.” (p.137-138)

  • “The results from the present review indicate that substantial personality group differences across academic majors exist...Consistent findings ...across studies were that students of arts/humanities and psychology scored high on Neuroticism and Openness; Students of political science scored high on Openness; students of economics, law, political science and medicine scored high on extraversion; students of medicine, psychology, arts/humanities, and sciences scored high on Agreeableness; and students of arts/humanities scored low on Conscientiousness.” (p.1)

  • “Arts/humanities students scored significantly higher on Agreeableness (than law and economics students), neuroticism (than medicine ...and economics students), and openness (than medicine, law, economics, and science students), and lower on Conscientiousness (than medicine and psychology students)...Economics students scored significantly lower on Agreeableness (than medicine, psychology, science, and arts/humanities students) and Neuroticism (than psychology and arts/humanities students)...Science students scored significantly lower on Extraversion than all others.” (p.71)

back to top