The Effect of School Rank on Personality Traits

Abstract

We study the effect of classroom rank on high school students’ Big Five personality traits. We exploit idiosyncratic differences in the class distribution of earlier academic achievement. Such differences generate quasi-random variation in class rank for students with the same initial achievement. We find a positive and sizeable effect of rank on conscientiousness, but we find no effects on the other four personality traits. A thorough analysis of the mechanism suggests that the primary channels through which class rank improves conscientiousness are perceived ability and academic motivation.