Personalities of students in three faculties: perception and accuracy

Abstract

The personalities of 90 undergraduate students were assessed in three faculties, arts, science, and social science using self ratings on a 20 adjective rating scale. These responses were then aggregated to calculate the modal personality profile for each of the three faculties. Another 90 students completed the scale in a manner that they felt a typical student in one of the three faculties would respond. Self ratings of personality within a faculty averaged 0.57 on agreement. Peer ratings averaged 0.48 on agreement with each other and 0.36 on accuracy in predicting the self ratings. Arts and social science students are similar in average personality, both being high on affiliation (sociability) and sentence (sensitive to experiences of the senses), whereas science students are precise (exacting).