For a long time, various psychologists using different angles of perception have discussed the concept of personality, but a collective agreeable one has focused on three main aspects. Accordingly, personality entails the natural or learned combination of a person’s mental processes, together with their emotional affective domain, to produce observable behavior. Sometimes, while external environments may influence behavior, personality relies on mental aspects such as attitudes, beliefs, tempers, and overall self-control to produce or regulate behavior. From the academic dimension, it is prudent to note that performance is the observable behavior that results from the coordination of mental or cognitive processes inspired by the affective domain.
While personality has been defined from wider angles, such as extroversion and introversion, the four-temperament theory holds that there are four main personality types: phlegmatic, melancholy, sanguine, and choleric. It is from this theory that Briggs and Meyers further developed a 16-personality framework that holds that there are 16 specific personalities in the world, which rely on the four main temperaments. For this paper, personality will be discussed from the four-temperament theory, from where my phlegmatic personality traits are explained in detail, how these traits positively influence performance from my personality, and the plans in place to ensure future success.
Personality and academic performance
Personality constitutes different traits that characterize how each type operates and hence, gets to perform in different situations, including academic performance. From a general perspective, phlegmatic are known to be emotionally stable individuals who are calm, while their cognitive abilities are relatively very high. They have also been described as being quite sluggish in movement, with a quiet nature and a very high level of devotion. These personality attributes have been shown to contribute to their overall improved academic performance.
From a grading perspective, personality has been found to influence academic grade achievement. In a study conducted to find out the relationship between personality and academic grade achievement, results indicated that phlegmatic tend to achieve higher average scores than the rest. At the same time, choleric retakes fewer times than the rest of the personalities. These findings confirm that phlegmatic are included to achieve better grades in classroom performance, owing to their high cognitive ability, composure, and the calmness required to grasp learning content. In addition, it was also discovered that their persevering nature and their capacity to set goals really improved their concentration in learning, helping them achieve higher grades than the rest of the other personality students (Shadrina et al., 2019). Therefore, personality does influence grade achievement from a personality perspective.
On the other hand, the calmness and quietness of phlegmatic have been found to influence their movements around educational institutions and environments. While being calm and quiet is beneficial for learning, its presence in practical learning environments may hinder their ability to perform fast and catch up with the rest. Kaviyarasi (2018) indicates that phlegmatic often tend to remain sluggish on campus, especially when required to move fast to gather data in scientific experiments or other areas requiring immediate and fast input. As a result, it lowers their mobility and negatively affects their performance in physically demanding learning subjects.
Given that the above highlights have focused on improved performance, it is necessary to consider instances where it is hindered. On the one hand, the attributes of being sluggish and working under pressure to achieve better results have contributed to the inability to lock down the capacity to perform better. The implication is that in stressful situations and under extreme pressures, phlegmatic are almost unable to perform in equal measure in ways they normally would. As such, their performances are reduced substantially. To ensure that improvement is achieved, it is prudent to plan to avoid last-minute rushes that increase pressure and make it difficult to perform better (Hellas et al., 2018). At the same time, early preparations to create the right energy to learn fast and catch up with any learning pace will be necessary, especially in situations requiring immediate content assimilations. These are the most significant efforts that are suggested for the improvement of future performance.
Conclusion
Essentially, it has come to light that personality does, to a greater extent, influence academic performance, whereby phlegmatic individuals are prone to get better grades than any other personality. At the same time, choleric are unlikely to repeat or retake classes. Personality attributes such as high cognition level, emotional calmness, and composure create favorable internal learning environments in individuals with phlegmatic personalities, enabling them to perform even better. However, extreme pressure and the sluggish phlegmatic nature have been found to affect their academic performance negatively. To improve the situation, early preparations to handle extreme pressure situations, as well as gathering the right energy for learning, have been found to lead to improvements in academic performance.
References
Formplus. (2022). What are the 16 Personality Types? By [Myer Briggs] + Free Tests. The Form Plus. Retrieved on October 23, 2022, from https://www.formpl.us/blog/personality-types
Hellas, A. et al. (2018). They are predicting academic performance: a systematic literature review. In Proceedings Companion of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2018 Companion). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 175–199. https://doi.org/10.1145/3293881.3295783
Kaviyarasi, R, T. (2018). Balasubramanian, I.J. Exploring the High Potential Factors that Affect Students’ Academic Performance. Education and Management Engineering, 2018, (6) pp. 15-23. Published Online November 2018 in MECS (http://www.mecs-press.net) DOI: 10.5815/ijeme.2018.06.02
Shadrina, E.V. Et al. (2019). Investigation of Temperament Characteristics Influencing the Academic Achievement of First-year University Students. Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International. Retrieved on October 23, 2022, from http://ceur-ws.org/Vol- 2478/paper14.pdf
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