A student’s “K-factor” predicts university GPA beyond SAT scores and personality

A new study published in Evolutionary Psychological Science reports that students who scored higher on the K-factor tended to have higher university GPAs, even after accounting for SAT scores, personality traits, and parent education.

Although standardized test scores, personality traits, motivation, study habits, and self-regulation are already known to predict university performance, researchers are still interested in identifying additional psychological factors that help explain why some students do better than others.

This research focuses on one such factor: the K-factor, a psychometric measure rooted in life history theory. Broadly, life history theory asks how people allocate limited time and energy across competing demands, such as learning, health, relationships, planning for the future, and immediate rewards. In this context, the K-factor is treated as a marker of a more future-oriented, socially connected, and long-term strategy, which could plausibly support academic success.

Tyler L. Minnigh and colleagues examined whether the K-factor predicts university GPA above and beyond better-established predictors, including SAT scores, Big Five personality traits, broader personality composites, and parent education. While many studies have examined intelligence and personality as predictors of academic achievement, no prior work has directly tested whether a psychometric life history measure predicts university academic performance.

The authors therefore asked whether the K-factor captures a meaningful non-cognitive ingredient of academic success, especially traits related to planning, self-regulation, social support, and investment in long-term goals.

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The study included a sample of 272 undergraduate students from Introduction to Psychology courses at a large Southwestern research university. Participants were eligible if they had SAT scores and spoke English as their primary language. Their official SAT scores and cumulative university GPAs were obtained from university records.

Participants completed the 120-item IPIP-NEO personality scale, which measured the Big Five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They also completed the 20-item Mini-K scale, which measured the K-factor, and demographic questions about sex, race/ethnicity, and parents’ highest education levels. The researchers also calculated SAT total scores, math-verbal ability tilt, a general factor of personality, and a stability-plasticity personality tilt.

Higher Mini-K scores were weakly but significantly associated with higher GPA, suggesting that students who reported more future-oriented, socially connected, and long-term life-history traits tended to perform somewhat better academically. SAT scores were also positively related to GPA, but parent education did not significantly predict GPA once SAT scores and Mini-K scores were considered together.

Higher Mini-K scores were related to higher conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, lower neuroticism, and no meaningful relationship with openness. Importantly, Mini-K scores still predicted GPA after accounting for the Big Five traits, including conscientiousness, one of the most established personality predictors of academic performance. In the most detailed model, stability-plasticity personality tilt also predicted GPA, with students who leaned more toward stability than plasticity showing higher grades, but Mini-K scores still explained a modest amount of unique variation.

Of note is that the study relied on the Mini-K as the only measure of life history strategy rather than a longer and broader measure. As well, the design was cross-sectional, with personality and Mini-K scores collected around the same time as GPA. Thus, while findings show that the K-factor is associated with academic performance, they cannot establish whether it predicts later academic success over time.

The study, “The K-factor Predicts University Academic Performance,” was authored by Tyler L. Minnigh, Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Stephanie M. Witherell, and Thomas R. Coyle.