What You Study Changes Your Personality

There are stereotypes around who studies what and what those people turn out to be when they’re done their education. One example of this is that MBA students tend to be immoral upon graduation. That, and other stereotypes do have a basis in reality according to new research out of Denmark. What’s really interesting about this is that career counsellors may want to suggest fields based of a person’s personality rather than other metrics.

According to a new meta-analysis, there are significant personality differences between students in different academic majors. For the review paper, Anna Vedel, a psychologist from Aarhus University in Denmark, analyzed 12 studies examining the correlation between personality traits and college majors. Eleven of them found significant differences between majors. The review examined the so-called “Big Five” traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

Vedel writes that she hopes her findings can help college counselors guide students into the best majors for their personalities. That, she thinks, might help reduce drop-out rates. At the very least, it might help certain English majors understand why they never can seem to remember to do their stats homework, even though they worry about it constantly.

Read more.

Scroll To Top