New research published in evolutionary psychology Students who score higher on the K factor tend to report higher college GPAs, even after accounting for SAT scores, personality traits, and parental education.
Although we already know that standardized test scores, personality traits, motivation, study habits, and self-regulation predict college performance, researchers are still interested in identifying additional psychological factors that help explain why some students do better than others.
This study focuses on one such factor, the K-factor, a psychometric measure rooted in life history theory. In general, life history theory asks how we allocate our limited time and energy to competing demands, such as learning, health, relationships, future plans, and immediate rewards. In this context, the K-factor could be treated as an indicator of a more future-oriented and socially connected long-term strategy that could plausibly support academic success.
Tyler L. Minnigh and colleagues examined whether the K factor predicted college GPA above and beyond more established predictors such as SAT scores, the Big 5 personality traits, broad personality composites, and parental education. Although many studies have investigated intelligence and personality as predictors of academic performance, no studies have directly examined whether life history psychometric measures predict academic performance in college.
The authors therefore asked whether the K-factor captures meaningful non-cognitive components of academic success, particularly characteristics related to planning, self-regulation, social support, and investment in long-term goals.
This study included a sample of 272 undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course at a large research university in the Southwest. Participants were eligible if they had an SAT score and spoke English as their first language. Their official SAT scores and cumulative college GPA were obtained from college records.
Participants completed the 120-item IPIP-NEO personality scale, which measures the Big Five traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They also completed the 20-item Mini-K scale measuring the K factor and demographic questions regarding gender, race/ethnicity, and highest level of parental education. The researchers also calculated total SAT scores, slopes for math and language skills, general components of personality, and personality slopes for stability and plasticity.
Higher Mini-K scores were weakly but significantly associated with higher GPAs, suggesting that students who reported more future-oriented, socially connected, and long-term life history characteristics tended to have somewhat better academic outcomes. SAT scores were also positively correlated with GPA, but parental education did not significantly predict GPA when SAT scores and Mini-K scores were considered together.
Higher Mini-K scores were associated with higher levels of conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and lower neuroticism, and were not significantly related to openness. Importantly, Mini-K scores predicted GPA after accounting for the Big Five traits, including conscientiousness, one of the most established personality predictors of academic performance. In the most detailed model, the Stability and Plasticity personality slopes also predicted GPA, with students leaning toward Stability over Plasticity performing better, although Mini-K scores still explained a modest amount of unique variation.
Of note, this study relied on the Mini-K as the sole measure of life history strategy rather than longer and more extensive measures. Additionally, the design was cross-sectional and included personality and Mini-K scores collected around the same time as GPA. Therefore, although our findings indicate that the K factor is associated with academic performance, we cannot establish whether it predicts subsequent academic success over time.
The study, “K-factor Predicts University Academic Performance,” was authored by Tyler L. Minnigh, Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Stephanie M. Witherell, and Thomas R. Coyle.
