The Big Five Personality Traits, Well-Being, and Coping With Stress: A Comparison of Honors and Regular Undergraduates

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Abstract

In this session, we present findings from a study with honors and regular undergraduate students exploring their personality profiles and investigating the extent to which these profiles are associated with students’ well-being and coping strategies for stress. We used latent class analysis on the Big Five personality traits of a total of 532 undergraduate students (229 honors) and identified three distinct profiles: Overcontrollers, Averages, and Resilients. Honors students were underrepresented in the Averages profile. No significant disproportionality was observed in the other two profiles. Resilients had the highest well-being scores and showed a greater tendency to engage in proactive problem solving when faced with stress. In contrast, Overcontrollers leaned towards using accountability and self-critique as their primary coping strategy.

Authors

• Sakhavat Mammadov, University of Georgia

• Dana Lockhart, L'Assemblee pour l'art et la recherche

• Anne N. Rinn, University of North Texas

• Thomas J. Ward, College of William & Mary