Literature Review 

Cultural Capital 

Cultural capital is a resource consisting of any collection of mannerisms, cultural tastes, and strategies of interactions with educators which is both associated with high status backgrounds and rewarded by the education system (Bourdieu, 1973; 1986; Lamont and Lareau, 1988).  Bourdieu (1973) argued that the behaviours and characteristics which make up cultural capital come as second nature to the children of high socio-economic status (SES) families. These families possess and inculcate in their children an upper class ‘habitus’, a mental framework of behaviours, dispositions, values, and tastes, which are shaped by the social background in which one grows up. Elements of this high-status habitus are then rewarded by the education system, meaning that the children of well-off families do better in school and maintain their advantage. Just as intergenerational wealth inequality is created by wealthy families passing on economic capital to their children, Bourdieu proposed that intergenerational educational inequality is created by well-educated and high SES families passing on cultural capital to their children.

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Wildhagen (2009) outlines two mechanisms through which cultural capital might lead to better academic outcomes: teacher-selection and self-selection. Self-selection proposes that students with more cultural capital find school to be a more natural and welcoming environment due to the characteristics of their habitus, and thus put more effort into their studies and choose to study for longer. Teacher-selection proposes that students with more cultural capital better understand the implicit norms of education and use specific strategies of interaction with teachers. Therefore these students have better relationships with teachers, improving their outcomes relative to peers with less cultural capital. This might lead to a positive feedback loop where the student is rewarded better for their effort than a student with less cultural capital, and thus decides to put in more effort and pursue further education. Although Wildhagen (2009) found evidence only for the self-selection mechanism, it is possible that the teacher-selection mechanism only works for certain aspects of cultural capital. If this is the case, then the true relevance of the mechanism would be obscured by not specifying which aspects of cultural capital we expect to be relevant.  

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There are two key issues which researchers must investigate to understand the role of cultural capital in educational inequality. First, the specific traits and behaviours which make up cultural capital vary between contexts and over time. Cultural capital is not defined as any specific trait or behaviour. Instead, any trait or behaviour which is associated with a high SES background and is rewarded by the education system may be considered cultural capital (Lamont and Lareau, 1988). Therefore, we must first identify what counts as cultural capital. Secondly, the definition of cultural capital does not specify how these traits or behaviours lead to better outcomes for students. To show that cultural capital is important for educational inequality, we must investigate the mechanisms through which it improves grades. This article argues that personality traits can be usefully considered an element of cultural capital, and proposes a model in which personality traits affect educational outcomes via the teacher-selection mechanism.

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Personality Traits 

In order to understand the role personality traits play in educational inequality, it is important to understand how they relate to Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, to academic achievement, and to SES. I will discuss each of these issues in turn. 

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Personality traits are defined as stable and enduring patterns of thought, behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes which vary across individuals (Mammadov, 2022). Habitus is defined as a mental framework of behaviours, dispositions, values, and tastes which are shaped by social structure. The similarities between these concepts and the potential of combining them seems clear. For instance, it is possible that personality traits might describe some characteristics of habitus. This would provide a useful way of quantifying the differences between the upper and working class habitus, and perhaps allow us to better identify which elements of habitus act as cultural capital. One of the most widely used personality taxonomies is the ‘Big Five’, which postulates five domain-level traits: Openness/Intellect, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (McCrae & Costa Jr., 2008). The ‘Big Five’ is hierarchically ordered so that within each trait there are facets which represent more specific aspects of that trait. Kaiser and Schneickert (2016) argue that the opportunity to expand the concept of habitus is clear.  Integrating personality into a Bordieuan framework might help us identify the internal psychological aspects of habitus, measure their effects on inequality, and, given that personality traits manifest in observable differences in behaviour, identify new aspects of cultural capital.

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If personality traits are to expand our conception of habitus, then they should both be shaped by social background and affect SES outcomes. Most literature discussing personality and SES treats personality as an ‘inner resource’, which is innate rather than socially determined (Shanahan et al., 2014). However, other researchers have investigated how personality is affected by, and serves to reproduce, social class. Leckelt et al. (2019) find that high-net-worth (<€1m) Germans have different personality characteristics compared to the general population, exhibiting the traits which are most associated with upwards social mobility (high extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, narcissism, low neuroticism, and an internal locus of control). Shanahan et al. (2014) finds that traits including agreeableness, intellect, and neuroticism partially mediate the effect of parents’ education on their child’s education and hourly wages as an adult. Kaiser and Schneickert (2016) also found it helpful to use personality to quantify habitus. Their results suggest promise in using personality traits to quantify elements of habitus. By showing that certain traits are associated with better outcomes, and that these traits are more common in well-educated and well-off people, they make a convincing argument to treat personality traits as a valuable form of capital which facilitates the reproduction of social class. It should be noted, however, that the relationship between SES outcomes and personality is less clear. Some large-scale studies have found a positive correlation between SES and conscientiousness and a negative correlation between neuroticism and SES (Jonassaint et al., 2009; Judge et al., 1999; Shiner et al., 2003). On the other hand, Hughes et al. (2021) found weak or non-existent relationships between ‘Big Five’ traits and SES outcomes.

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In contrast to SES, the relationship between personality traits and academic achievement is well established (De Raad and Schouwenburg, 1996; Hill and Jackson, 2016; Poropat, 2009). A recent meta-analysis has confirmed that personality is a key predictor of academic achievement, and pointed to conscientiousness and openness/intellect as the two most important traits for academic performance (Mammadov, 2022). However, the way academic achievement is measured matters (Hübner et al., 2022). This study considers two distinct measures: standardized test scores, which are taken to be an objective measure of competence, and teacher-assigned grades, which may also measure competence but may be affected by teachers’ subjective judgements of their students. In the American context, where students take standardized tests but grades are often based on the teacher’s judgement, grades and test scores are only moderately correlated. This suggests that they may measure different aspects of a student’s competence and behaviour (Borghans et al., 2016; Willingham et al., 2002). Congruent with this view, personality differentially predicts outcomes across achievement measures, predicting teacher-assigned grades more accurately than standardized test scores (Borghans et al., 2016; Lena Roemer et al., 2022). It seems likely that personality contributes to different achievement measures through different mechanisms.

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Roemer et al. (2022) distinguishes between two broad pathways through which personality affects academic achievement: competence-related mechanisms and competence-independent mechanisms. Competence-related mechanisms propose that personality leads to behaviours which directly affect achievement. For example, openness/intellect is significantly associated with critical thinking, and peer learning (Bidjerano & Dai, 2007). These behaviours may then foster greater mastery of the material, leading to higher grades and scores on achievement tests.  Competence-independent pathways are associated with better results on teacher-assigned grades but not necessarily on standardized tests, and generally propose that certain traits are associated with behaviours which are rewarded by teachers but not connected to actual competency. For example, the ‘invest and accrue’ model of conscientiousness holds that individuals with high conscientiousness tend to display behaviours which involve expending more effort in the present to receive greater rewards in the future (Hill & Jackson, 2016). Westphal et al. (2021) finds that students with high conscientiousness received better teacher assigned grades compared to peers with lower conscientiousness controlling for differences in standardised test scores. They suggest that teachers reward students who exhibit these behaviours in class, even if they do not actually contribute to mastery of the material, by assigning better grades to students who display conscientiousness-driven behaviours. Thus, conscientiousness appears to improve grades in ways that are not  related to increased competence.

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Combining Two Disciplines 

To my knowledge, only one study has combined personality traits, habitus, and cultural capital. Kaiser and Schneickert (2016) found that three ‘Big Five’ facets—focus (a facet of conscientiousness), intellect and curiosity (facets of openness/intellect)—partially mediated the effect of parental education on teacher-assigned grades. Thus, these facets may be considered elements of cultural capital. However, a key limitation of Kaiser and Schneickert’s work is that they did not investigate the mechanism through which high SES personality traits led to greater academic achievement. It is this issue which I will consider next.

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The Teacher-Selection Mechanism for Personality 

There is a striking overlap between the teacher-selection mechanism proposed to explain cultural capital effects and the competence-independent pathways proposed to explain why certain personality traits affect teacher-assigned grades more strongly than standardized tests. In both cases, characteristics of the student which are not directly related to competency, are preferred by teachers, leading to positive academic outcomes. It seems natural then to propose a teacher-selection mechanism to explain how personality works as an element of cultural capital. If teachers have more positive evaluations of the abilities of students with high SES personality characteristics, then they might overestimate the grades of these students. Based on the literature reviewed above, the most likely trait to fulfil this role is conscientiousness. It is associated with high-SES backgrounds (Jonassaint et al., 2009) and more strongly associated with positive results in teacher-assigned grades than standardised tests (Westphal et al., 2021). Kaiser and Schneickert (2016) also found that one facet of conscientiousness may be considered an element of cultural capital.