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Personality and Individual Differences

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Implicit conscientiousness predicts academic performance

Michelangelo Vianello *, Egidio Robusto, Pasquale AnselmiDepartment of General Psychology, University of Padova, v. Venezia 8 35131, Padova, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 17 June 2009Received in revised form 10 November 2009Accepted 12 November 2009Available online xxxx

Keywords:IATImplicit conscientiousnessExplicit conscientiousnessAcademic performanceGender differencesFaking

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.11.019

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 049 827 6296; faE-mail address: michelangelo.vianello@unipd.it (M

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a b s t r a c t

Across two studies, we provide the first evidence of a positive causal relationship between implicit con-scientiousness and academic performance. Results showed how both implicit and explicit conscientious-ness predicted the number of examinations that students successfully passed in the semester thatfollowed their participation in the study. The implicit measure of conscientiousness is shown to be incre-mentally valid when compared to two different explicit measures. Participants’ gender moderated theeffect of implicit, but not explicit, conscientiousness. Lastly, we found that motivating students to managetheir impression resulted in an increased self-reported conscientiousness which was not reflected in theimplicit measure, nor did this manipulation affect the predictive validity of implicit and explicit consci-entiousness. The main theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

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1. Introduction

An important topic in the evaluation of personality concernsparticipants’ ability to convey an ‘‘augmented” image of theirselves. Any time social desirability and impression managementstrategies are an issue, self-reported measures might be inade-quate because they might lead to wrong decisions (e.g., to hire arather negligent person that is quite able to manage how he is per-ceived). On the other hand, self-reported measures of conscien-tiousness have been found to be extremely useful to predictscholastic and job performance. Since the famous meta-analysisby Barrick and Mount (1991), personality measures have increas-ingly and effectively been used in scholastic and organizationalcontexts. More recent work has demonstrated that conscientious-ness is the best personality predictor of job performance, trainingperformance and academic achievements, and that it has incre-mental validity beyond cognitive ability (Di Fabio & Busoni,2007; Higgins, Peterson, Pihl, & Lee, 2007; Schmidt & Hunter,1998, 2004). Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham (2004) explainedthe relationship between conscientiousness and academic perfor-mance (typically ranging from r = .2 to r = .5) in terms of the per-sisting, self-disciplined, and achievement-oriented nature ofconscientious students.

Yet, Komar, Brown, Komar, and Robie (2008) showed that fakinghas strong effects on the criterion-related validity of conscientious-ness, and Holden (2008) suggested that the influence of fakingmight have been seriously underestimated.

ll rights reserved.

x: +39 049 827 6600.. Vianello).

., et al. Implicit conscientiousn

On the contrary, the predictive validity of implicit measures isnot influenced by social desirability (Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhl-mann, & Banaji, 2009), as implicit measures are generally moreresistant to faking (see, e.g., Blair, 2002), especially when respon-dents are new to the technique (Fiedler & Blümke, 2005) and whenthey are not instructed on how to fake it (Do Yeong, 2003). As far asconscientiousness is concerned, Steffens (2004) showed that in-structed participants were very well able to fake the NEO-Five Fac-tor Inventory (NEO-FFI, Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993) but not theimplicit measure of conscientiousness. In this study, the authorsmeasured implicit conscientiousness by means of an Implicit Asso-ciation Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998), which isthe most widely used implicit technique and is applied in very dif-ferent domains (see Lane, Banaji, Nosek, & Greenwald, 2007 for areview). Since it was first presented in 1998, the IAT was followedby many other techniques (e.g. Bar-Anan, Nosek, & Vianello, 2009;Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005), but so far, none of themshowed equally good psychometric properties (Greenwald et al.,2002; Greenwald et al., 2009; Robusto, Cristante, & Vianello,2008). In personality research, implicit techniques have been suc-cessfully employed to measure many constructs, among whichthe Big-Five personality traits (e.g. Boldero, Rawlings, & Haslam,2007; Grumm & von Collani, 2007; Steffens, 2004).

Implicit measures have also been used to investigate scholasticperformance. Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald (2002) demonstratedthat the attitude toward mathematics predicts unique variance ofthe Scientific Aptitude Test (SAT). Kiefer and Sekaquaptewa(2007) found that the interaction between gender identity and im-plicit (but not explicit) gender stereotypes predicts both the finalgrade and participants’ career goals. The gender-science stereotype

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(according to which men are typically associated with science andwomen with arts) also predicts national gender differences inmathematics achievement (Nosek et al., 2009).

Inter-individual differences in implicit constructs are typically avalid predictor of behavior. In a recent meta-analysis conducted on103 different studies (K = 140 independent samples, N = 10967),Greenwald et al. (2009) observed a moderate significant correla-tion between IAT-measured implicit constructs and behavior, andthe authors found that this relationship was independent from so-cial sensitivity (subjects’ eagerness to be perceived positively). IAT-measured implicit constructs enhance our capability to predict rel-evant behavior, and this is especially the case when studying so-cially sensitive research topics or when impression managementis an issue (e.g. in admission tests or job selection).

In this paper we will investigate whether an implicit measure ofconscientiousness (implicit conscientiousness) might represent avalid alternative to traditional measures when impression man-agement is an issue. Hence, we hypothesize that it will effectivelypredict academic performance even when participants are moti-vated to fake.

2. First study

This study tests the hypothesis (H1) that implicit conscientious-ness predicts academic performance at least as much as explicitconscientiousness.

2.1. Method

2.1.1. Participants and procedureFifty psychology students at the University of Padua partici-

pated in the study without any form of financial reward. Data werecollected in individual cubicles at the beginning of the first semes-ter. Their mean age was 21.77 (SD = 1.03). Although precise dataconcerning participants’ gender was not collected, the vast major-ity were male. After they signed the informed consent, they weretold to read the instructions on the screen. A computerized versionof the explicit conscientiousness scales (BFO and BFQ), with theitems in random order, preceded or followed a Conscientious-ness-IAT in counterbalanced order. Then, participants indicatedtheir year of enrollment, the number of examinations successfullypassed, their mean examination mark and were finally thankedand debriefed.

2.1.2. Measures2.1.2.1. Independent variables (IV). The study used an IAT-based im-plicit measure of conscientiousness, and the conscientiousnessscales of the Big Five Observer (BFO, Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Borg-ogni, 1994) and of the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ, Caprara, Bar-baranelli, & Borgogni, 2000) as explicit measures. We used twoexplicit measures of conscientiousness because the BFO and the

Table 1Study 1. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations between study variables.

M (SD) a (n. items)

IAT D .39 (.32) .73 (24)BFO 4.73 (.71) .73 (8)BFQ 3.31 (.37) .76 (24)Mean examination mark 25.97 (1.68)Number of exams successfully passed 5.01 (1.45)

The IAT-Number of Exams correlation is greater than the BFQ-Number of Exams correcorrelations are not different (test performed with the Fisher’s r to z’ transformation).

* p < .05.** p < .01.

Please cite this article in press as: Vianello, M., et al. Implicit conscientiousn(2009), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.11.019

IAT share the same items and consequently they are more compa-rable to each other than the IAT and the BFQ. Indeed, the BFO con-scientiousness scale consists of eight pairs of bipolar adjectives.One adjective of each pair concerns a conscientiousness element;the other one concerns its direct antonym. The position, betweenthe pair of adjectives, that best describes the respondent is givenon a 7 point scale. The BFQ conscientiousness scale has also beenstandardized for the Italian population, and it consists of 24 itemsevaluated on a scale of 1 (Absolutely untrue for me) to 5 (Abso-lutely true for me). Example of items in the BFQ scales are: ‘‘Mess-iness annoys me a lot” and ‘‘I rarely give up”. Reliability indexes areprovided in Table 1. The IAT used the category labels I, Others, Con-scientious, Not Conscientious. Eight pronouns related to the nom-inal categories ‘‘I/Others” were used as stimuli to represent them.The eight bipolar pairs of adjectives of the BFO conscientiousnessscale were used to represent the nominal categories ‘‘Conscien-tious/Not Conscientious”. A list of all stimuli is available from thefirst author. Participants were tested individually in a laboratory.The seven-block IAT employed (Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji,2003) presented stimuli related to the target dimension (I vs. Oth-ers) and the attribute dimension (Conscientious vs. Not Conscien-tious) in the center of the computer screen in an alternatingfashion. Blocks 1, 2 and 5 provided practice trials and blocks 3, 4,6 and 7 provided critical trials. Participants were asked to catego-rize stimuli as belonging to the concepts displayed at the top-leftor top-right screen corner by pressing, as quickly and accuratelyas possible, the response key ‘‘A” or ‘‘L”, respectively. The orderof the test blocks was counterbalanced. Past research successfullyemployed the IAT for measuring some or all the Big Five traits,showing in many ways that IATs can validly assess the semanticaspect of trait self-concepts. Implicit conscientiousness has beenfound to be different from explicit conscientiousness (althoughthey are moderately correlated) and implicit personality traitswere shown to effectively predict spontaneous behavior (Schnabel,Asendorpf, & Greenwald 2008; Steffens & Schulze König, 2006).

2.1.2.2. Dependent variables (DV). Academic performance was mea-sured with two self-reported indexes of prior academic achieve-ment, i.e. participants’ mean examination mark (ranging from 18to 30) and the number of exams successfully passed in the pastyear (ranging from 0 to 8).

2.2. Results

The IAT D effect (Greenwald et al., 2003) and the mean scoreson the BFO and BFQ scales were computed as independent vari-ables (IV) for each participant. All variables can be considered nor-mally distributed (kurtosis and skewness indexes < 2 SE). Table 1shows summary statistics, internal consistencies, and Pearson cor-relations of the implicit conscientiousness, explicit conscientious-ness and academic performance measures. Our participants

Correlations

BFO BFQ Mean Mark Number of Exams

.13 .21 .24 .29*

.72** .10 .14.05 .03

.71**

lation (p < .05) whereas the IAT-Number of Exams and the BFO-Number of Exams

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show, on average, a moderate implicit (MIAT = .39) and explicit con-scientiousness (MBFO = 4.73 on 7; MBFQ = 3.31 on 5).

Importantly, we found that implicit conscientiousness posi-tively correlates with the number of exams successfully passed(r = .29, p = .045). Explicit measures of conscientiousness correlatewith each other (r = .72, p < .001), but there is no relationship be-tween them and participants’ academic performance.

2.3. Discussion

This study provides a first demonstration that implicit consci-entiousness is positively related to participants’ number of examssuccessfully passed each year. These results suggest that implicitconscientiousness is at least as predictive of academic performanceas explicit conscientiousness. However, this study also presentsimportant drawbacks. First, there is extensive literature that linksexplicit conscientiousness and academic performance. We did ex-pect a significant relationship between implicit conscientiousnessand academic performance but we also expected an analogousrelationship between explicit conscientiousness and academic per-formance, and we have not been able to test for eventual modera-tors that might have obscured this relationship (such asparticipants’ willingness to manage their impression). We col-lected data in a laboratory inside our faculty, and such a settingmight have pushed students to manage their displayed conscien-tiousness toward a socially desirable level, thus distorting explicitmeasures and jeopardizing their predictive validity.

Second, we cannot infer any causality in the relationship we ob-served. It may be true that participants high in implicit conscien-tiousness achieve better performance than those that are low inimplicit conscientiousness, but the opposite might also be true. Aprospective design in which academic performance is measuredafter implicit conscientiousness and explicit conscientiousnessmight clear up this point.

Third, we employed a self-reported measure of participants’academic performance, which suffers from the same problems thataffect explicit measures. For instance, participants might also havefaked their self-reported academic performance.

We will address all these issues in the following study, in whichwe further analyze the relationship between implicit conscien-tiousness and explicit conscientiousness and academic perfor-mance adopting a prospective experimental design and directmeasures of academic performance. Furthermore, in the followingstudy we will also test whether gender moderates the relationshipbetween explicit conscientiousness and academic performance,between implicit conscientiousness and academic performance,or both (see e.g. Schmitt, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008; Weathing-ton & Moldenhauer, 2008).

3. Second study

This study aims at confirming results from study 1 (H1) and alsotest the hypotheses that implicit conscientiousness is less suscep-tible to faking attempts (H2) and that implicit conscientiousnessaccounts for unique variance in the prediction of academic perfor-mance (H3).

3.1. Method

3.1.1. Participants and procedureSeventy-one psychology students at the University of Padua

participated in the study with no financial reward. Their meanage was 23.66 (SD = 2.7), and 39 were male. After they provided in-formed consent, they were randomly assigned either to the exper-imental or to the control group. In this study, we experimentally

Please cite this article in press as: Vianello, M., et al. Implicit conscientiousn(2009), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.11.019

manipulated participants’ willingness to fake the tests. Instructionsgiven in the former group told participants that the aim of thestudy was to recruit students that would have been offered awell-paid job at the faculty. Then, participants in the experimentalgroup (Faking) were asked how interested they would have been inthis job opportunity on a scale from 0 (not at all interested) to 10(strongly interested). Participants in the control group were not gi-ven any specific information about the aim of the study. Data werecollected in individual cubicles at the beginning of the firstsemester.

3.1.2. MeasuresWe used the same implicit and explicit measures of conscien-

tiousness from study 1. Academic performance is the actual num-ber of examinations successfully passed by participants in theeight months that followed their participation in the study andtheir actual mean mark in those exams. This information, whichis public in Italy, was downloaded from a public area in the univer-sity’s website.

3.2. Results

Before the analyses, we checked for normality and outliers. Allvariables can be considered normally distributed (kurtosis andskewness indexes < 2 SE).

3.2.1. Manipulation checkExplicit measures of conscientiousness were correlated to par-

ticipants’ interest in the job ostensibly offered in the faking condi-tion (rBFO = .36, p = .02; rBFQ = .31; p = .045). Hence, we can statethat our manipulation worked as expected.

3.2.2. Descriptive statisticsTable 2 shows summary statistics, internal consistencies and

Pearson correlations of implicit conscientiousness, explicit consci-entiousness and academic performance measures. Participants, onaverage, are moderately conscientious at the explicit measure(MBFO = 4.78 on 7; MBFQ = 3.44 on 5), and lightly conscientious atthe implicit measure (MIAT=.45, SD = .26). Implicit measures of con-scientiousness do not differ for men and women, whereas womenreported a higher level of explicit conscientiousness than men did(MBFOmen = 4.58, MBFOwomen = 5.03, t(69) = 2.04, p = .04; MBFQmen =3.33, MBFQwomen = 3.57, t(69) = 1.87, p = .06). On average, partici-pants successfully passed 2.94 exams (SD = 1.82) in the eightmonths that followed their participation in the study, with a meanmark of 25.64 out of 30 (SD = 2.71). No gender differences werefound on these variables. Explicit conscientiousness is higher inthe Faking group (Control Group: MBFO = 4.39, MBFQ = 3.29; FakingGroup: MBFO = 5.04, MBFQ = 3.54; tBFO = 3.13, df = 70; p = .003;tBFQ = 1.93, df = 70; p = .06) whereas implicit conscientiousness isequal across groups (Control Group: MIAT = .42; Faking Group:MIAT = .48; tIAT = .90, df = 70; p = .37). Hence, we can accept H2.

3.2.3. Hypotheses testingAs we can see from Table 2, explicit and implicit measures of

conscientiousness are significantly correlated to participants’ num-ber of successful exams and not to their mean mark. Hence, impli-cit conscientiousness facilitated students in passing more examswithout affecting their marks (H1). In order to test for moderatingeffects of group membership (Faking vs. Control) and gender (bothwere dummy coded) we followed recommendations by Baron andKenny (1986). Before the analyses, variables were centered aroundtheir mean (hence we subtracted the mean of the variable fromany individual score) to allow an adequate interpretation of even-tual interaction effects and to avoid the risk of multicollinearity(Aiken & West, 1991). Then, each IV was tested separately

ess predicts academic performance. Personality and Individual Differences

Table 2Study 2. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations between study variables.

M (SD) a (n. items) Correlations

BFO BFQ Mean Mark Number of Exams

IAT D .45 (.26) .86 (24) .14 .03 .13 .27*

BFO 4.78 (.92) .80 (8) .81** .16 .35**

BFQ 3.44 (.56) .90 (24) .16 .28*

Mean Examination Mark 25.69 (2.72) .09Number of exams successfully passed 3.03 (1.96)

* p < .05.** p < .01.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Low ImplicitConscientiousness

High ImplicitConscientiousness

Num

ber

of s

ucce

sful

exa

ms

Males

Females

Fig. 1. The moderation effect of gender on the relationship between implicitconscientiousness and the number of exams successfully passed by participants.

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regressing at the first step the IV on the DV, then adding the cate-gorical moderator variable (MV) as an IV and finally adding theinteraction variable (the product term between the IV and theMV). At each step, we tested whether the change in R2 from theprevious step was different from zero. While a DR2 – 0 at the firstand second step indicates a significant main effect of the indepen-dent or moderator variables, a DR2 – 0 in the third step suggeststhat the moderation effect is different from zero. Although ourmanipulation significantly increased participants’ explicit consci-entiousness but not implicit conscientiousness, the relationshipbetween these predictors and participants’ academic performanceis not moderated by our manipulation (faking strategies). On thecontrary, the moderation effect of gender on the relationship be-tween the number of exams successfully passed and implicit con-scientiousness (but not explicit conscientiousness) tends to besignificant (DR2 = .05, b = .51, p = .06, see Table 3). The effects ofimplicit conscientiousness on participants’ academic performanceare greater for men than for women (see Fig. 1).

Lastly, we investigated the differential predictive validity of im-plicit and explicit measures of conscientiousness (H3), enteringthem in the following steps (explicit first) in a hierarchical linearregression. implicit conscientiousness accounts for a relevant per-centage of performance variance that is not already accounted forby the explicit measures (DR2

BFQ = .07; p = .03; DR2BFO = .045;

p = .07).

3.3. Discussion

This study further explored the relationship between implicitand explicit conscientiousness and academic achievement, mea-sured as (1) the number of successful examinations taken in theeight months after the laboratory phase and (2) participants’ meanmark in these exams. In line with previous literature (see e.g. Stef-fens, 2004), we found that explicit measures of conscientiousnesscan be easily faked, whereas implicit measures are more resistant.We found that both implicit and explicit conscientiousness in-crease participants’ number of exams successfully passed in thepast year without affecting their mean mark. In addition, weshowed that the predictive power of implicit conscientiousnesscannot be accounted for by the explicit measures. Gender moder-ated the effect of implicit (but not explicit) conscientiousness onperformance, such that its effect on performance is stronger formen than for women. Interestingly, and in line with previous

Table 3Results of the hierarchical linear regression on academic performance.

Step Independent variable added DR2 (p) b t (df) p

Intercept1 Implicit conscientiousness .07 (.04) .44 2.88 (61) <.012 Moderator (Male vs. Female) .02 (.24) .56 2.24 (60) .033 Interaction (Impl. Consc. * Mod.) .05 (.06) �.51 �1.90 (59) .06

Note: values in the last three columns refer to the third step (R2 = .15).

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literature (e.g. Schmitt et al., 2008), men also reported being lessconscientious than women, but implicit conscientiousness wasnot different across genders.

4. General discussion

In the literature, implicit measures of attitudes and stereotypeswere successfully employed to predict scholastic and academicachievement (Kiefer & Sekaquaptewa, 2007; Nosek et al. 2009). Re-sults of our studies showed that academic achievements are pre-dicted by implicit conscientiousness as well. In study 1 we foundthat implicit conscientiousness predicted participants’ mean markand in study 2 implicit conscientiousness predicted the number ofexams successfully passed. These differing results seem to suggestthat the effect of conscientiousness is different according to partic-ipants’ experience at the university. Indeed, whereas most studentsin the first study were enrolled in the first year, those involved inthe second one were enrolled in the third (and last) year. Wehypothesize that in a first stage implicit conscientiousness bringsstudents to improve their mean marks, whereas at the end of theirdegree course conscientious students pass more exams withoutlowering their mean mark.

Results of our studies provide the first demonstration that im-plicit conscientiousness predicts academic performance. Moreover,we have shown that implicit conscientiousness is incrementallyvalid when compared to explicit measures. This result emphasizesthe importance of implicit constructs and processes in personalitytheory and applications. Pending further investigation, this resultalso suggests that implicit measures should be included in researchand interventions on vocational guidance and school admission

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procedures. However, how these constructs interact with otherimportant predictors of performance such as intelligence and coreself-evaluations remains to be clarified and we hope future re-search will address this important question.

A second contribution concerns the different effects of ourmanipulation on implicit and explicit conscientiousness and thegender differences we observed in explicit, but not implicit, consci-entiousness. In line with previous studies, we found that encourag-ing participants to fake the tests increased their explicit but nottheir implicit conscientiousness. However, faking did not moderatethe relationships between implicit and explicit measures of consci-entiousness and academic performance. In addition, we found thatmen were less conscientious than women according to explicitmeasures, but implicit conscientiousness was not different acrossgenders. Gender differences in explicit conscientiousness – andpersonality traits in general – are an established notion, and theyhave recently been linked to levels of human development (e.g.,in terms of a long and healthy life, equal access to knowledgeand education, and economic wealth) achieved by a given culture.Schmitt et al. (2008) proposed that ‘‘heightened levels of sexualdimorphism result from personality traits of men and womenbeing less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in devel-oped nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, in-nate personality differences between men and women may beattenuated” (p. 168). Yet, our results suggest a less innatist inter-pretation. If implicit gender differences are smaller than explicitgender differences, as it seems, it is reasonable to hypothesize thatgender differences in personality traits can be ascribed to socialrole requirements (which influence more explicit measures), oreven to social desirability, rather than to traits. A test of thishypothesis, by using implicit measures of both conscientiousnessand gender-personality stereotype in cross-cultural investigations,might lead to interesting results that could solve the ‘‘nature vs.nurture” debate in this area.

Lastly, results of study 2 suggest that gender tends to moderatethe relationship between performance and implicit, but not expli-cit, conscientiousness. Implicit conscientiousness predicts aca-demic performance more strongly in men than in women,whereas explicit conscientiousness influences performance of bothgenders. We think a moderating effect of gender was actually pres-ent in both relationships, but we failed to see it while employing ex-plicit measures because of their malleability. We suspect thatparticipants were influenced in their responses by the social repre-sentation of men and women’s respective personalities, which inour culture depicts the latter as more careful, more tidy, lesssuperficial and less lazy than men. This gender-conscientiousnessstereotype might have led females to increase their explicit consci-entiousness and/or males to decrease it (in males, this phenomenonhas already been observed by Schmitt et al., 2008). Further, it islikely that social desirability effects were more intense for less con-scientious females and for more conscientious males, because oftheir greater distance from the social norm. This effect, mainlydue to the greater controllability of explicit measures, might haveobscured a moderating effect that, in contrast, was observed withthe implicit measure, which is more resistant to faking.

A limit of our studies is that we still lack evidence of the condi-tions under which implicit measures are more predictive than ex-plicit measures of conscientiousness. We hypothesized thatimpression management strategies would be important modera-tors of these relationships, and tested this hypothesis in study 2.Yet, we failed to find a significant effect. Future research mightbe addressed to this important point.

In conclusion, our studies suggest that implicit conscientious-ness positively predicts academic performance, that it is moreresistant than explicit measures to faking attempts, and that theimplicit measure has relevant incremental validity over two differ-

Please cite this article in press as: Vianello, M., et al. Implicit conscientiousn(2009), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.11.019

ent explicit measures. Finally, we have shown that gender tends tomoderate the implicit-performance and not the explicit-perfor-mance relationship. These results confirm the importance of theimplicit component in personality traits and emphasizes theirimportance in predicting behavior. Although these findings mustbe seen as preliminary, they are strong enough to open importantresearch questions that, if adequately addressed, could lead to animproved comprehension of important phenomena.

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