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Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students

Success in life is determined to a large extent by school performance so it is important to understand the effect of the factors that influence it. In this exploratory study, in addition to cognitive abilities, we attempt to link measures of preferences with outcomes of school performance. We measur...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Horn, Daniel, Kiss, Hubert Janos
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5815576/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29451886
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190163
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author Horn, Daniel
Kiss, Hubert Janos
author_facet Horn, Daniel
Kiss, Hubert Janos
author_sort Horn, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Success in life is determined to a large extent by school performance so it is important to understand the effect of the factors that influence it. In this exploratory study, in addition to cognitive abilities, we attempt to link measures of preferences with outcomes of school performance. We measured in an incentivized way risk, time, social and competitive preferences and cognitive abilities of university students to look for associations between these measures and two important academic outcome measures: exam results and GPA. We find consistently that cognitive abilities (proxied by the Cognitive Reflection Test) are very well correlated with school performance. Regarding non-cognitive skills, we report suggestive evidence for many of our measured preferences. We used two alternative measures of time preference: patience and present bias. Present bias explains exam grades better, while patience explains GPA relatively better. Both measures of time preferences have a non-linear relation to school performance. Competitiveness matters, as students, who opt for a more competitive payment scheme in our experimental task have a higher average GPA. We observe also that risk-averse students perform a little better than more risk-tolerant students. That makes sense in case of multiple choice exams, because more risk-tolerant students may want to try to pass the exam less prepared, as the possibility of passing an exam just by chance is not zero. Finally, we have also detected that cooperative preferences—the amount of money offered in a public good game—associates strongly with GPA in a non-linear way. Students who offered around half of their possible amounts had significantly higher GPAs than those, who offered none or all their money.
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spelling pubmed-58155762018-03-02 Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students Horn, Daniel Kiss, Hubert Janos PLoS One Research Article Success in life is determined to a large extent by school performance so it is important to understand the effect of the factors that influence it. In this exploratory study, in addition to cognitive abilities, we attempt to link measures of preferences with outcomes of school performance. We measured in an incentivized way risk, time, social and competitive preferences and cognitive abilities of university students to look for associations between these measures and two important academic outcome measures: exam results and GPA. We find consistently that cognitive abilities (proxied by the Cognitive Reflection Test) are very well correlated with school performance. Regarding non-cognitive skills, we report suggestive evidence for many of our measured preferences. We used two alternative measures of time preference: patience and present bias. Present bias explains exam grades better, while patience explains GPA relatively better. Both measures of time preferences have a non-linear relation to school performance. Competitiveness matters, as students, who opt for a more competitive payment scheme in our experimental task have a higher average GPA. We observe also that risk-averse students perform a little better than more risk-tolerant students. That makes sense in case of multiple choice exams, because more risk-tolerant students may want to try to pass the exam less prepared, as the possibility of passing an exam just by chance is not zero. Finally, we have also detected that cooperative preferences—the amount of money offered in a public good game—associates strongly with GPA in a non-linear way. Students who offered around half of their possible amounts had significantly higher GPAs than those, who offered none or all their money. Public Library of Science 2018-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5815576/ /pubmed/29451886 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190163 Text en © 2018 Horn, Kiss http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Horn, Daniel
Kiss, Hubert Janos
Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students
title Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students
title_full Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students
title_fullStr Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students
title_full_unstemmed Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students
title_short Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students
title_sort which preferences associate with school performance?—lessons from an exploratory study with university students
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5815576/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29451886
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190163
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