IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ON STUDENTS ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Personality is something everybody knows that it exists, but nobody knows that what it is (Schneewind and Ruppert, 1998). It is certainly true that it is difficult to put human personality which Goethe (1970) called the greatest happiness for children of this earth into scientific terms.Personality determines a set of important characteristics and that how people interact with others. Human personality is the combination of a number of traits. Personality can be measured as a set of items usually questions about behaviour and feelings to which the subjects have to respond by agreeing or disagreeing with that question or statements. (Kline, 1993).In 1930 personality psychology became an identifiable discipline in social sciences. During that time many separate lines of inquiry came together for the field generated by Allport (1937), Murry(1938) and Lewin(1935).Mary Laurence F. Fortu (n.d) described the following as the components of personality which are habits, attitudes, interests, values, principles and mental capacity or intelligence. Academic performance is a major issue among students, teachers, parents, school administrators, and the community at large.

Attempts have been made by researchers to unravel the complexities surrounding academic performance. Psychologists have put forward a lot of reasons why these disparities in performance exist. A lot of attention had been paid to external factors such as type of school, teaching methods, school location, instructional materials, teachers experience, and so on (WAEC, 2005). Many spend lots of money in order to secure good schools either for their children or themselves and those who can afford it even invest on education abroad as they believe this will enhance performance, and which in turn gives an added advantage in terms of securing gainful employment. Opinions vary as to why some students excel academically while others appear to be underachievers. Many psychologists have consistently attempted to identify the major predictors of individual academic performance. Factors such as intelligence, self concept, gender, study habit, maturation, home background, amongst others, just to mention a few, have been extensively explored as being responsible for academic performance.