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The Effect of School Rank on Personality Traits
- Journal of Human Resources
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Volume 56, Number 4, Fall 2021
- pp. 1187-1225
- Article
- Additional Information
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ABSTRACT:
We study the effect of classroom rank on high school students' Big Five personality traits. We exploit idiosyncratic differences in the class distribution of earlier academic achievement. Such differences generate quasi-random variation in class rank for students with the same initial achievement. We find a positive and sizeable effect of rank on conscientiousness, but we find no effects on the other four personality traits. A thorough analysis of the mechanism suggests that the primary channels through which class rank improves conscientiousness are perceived ability and academic motivation.