Truity's Personality and Careers Blog

According to a study of over 6000 students at Elon University in North Carolina, students with Judging preferences have higher average GPAs than students who prefer Perceiving. In addition, the study’s authors found that Introverted and Feeling types had grades that were higher than average, except in the Business major.

All Extraverted and Perceiving types (ENFP, ENTP, ESFP, and ESTP) were found to have significantly lower average GPAs when compared with their classmates. Students who preferred both Introversion and Judging or Feeling and Judging had statistically higher GPAs.

The study also looked at personality types in various majors and found several trends. ENFPs were clustered in the Communications majors, while Education attracted more ESFJs. ESTJs and ESTPs were overrepresented among students studying Business, but while ESTJ business students tended to have higher GPAs, the grades of ESTPs were significantly lower than average.

Fine Arts students were more likely to be ENFP or INFP, although these types did not have higher GPAs; students with Feeling and Judging preferences had the highest GPAs of the arts students. No personality trends were found among students in the social sciences or hard sciences; these majors seemed to reflect the personality distribution in the general population.

ESTPs and ENTPs had lower grades than their peers in a majority of areas of study. In contrast, INFJs and ENFJs showed statistically higher grades in five of the six academic areas. ISFJs were found to have higher GPAs than their classmates, on average, no matter what area of study they chose. The study was led by Dr. Cassandra DiRienzo and published in the Journal of Psychological Type.