Some researchers and policymakers advocate a stronger focus on fostering socio-emotional skills in the hope of helping students to succeed academically, especially those who are socially disadvantaged. Others have cautioned that this might increase, rather than reduce, social inequality because personality traits conducive to achievement are themselves unevenly distributed in disfavor of socially disadvantaged students. This paper contributes to this debate. Analyzing representative, large-scale data on 9,300 ninth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and using the Big Five personality traits as a measure of socio-emotional skills, we cast light on two related yet distinct aspects of social inequality in socio-emotional skills: First, do levels of personality traits conducive to achievement vary as a function of students’ parental socioeconomic status (pSES)? Second, do the returns to personality traits in terms of trait–achievement relations vary as function of pSES? Results showed that differences in Big Five traits between students with different pSES were small (.04 ≤ |r| ≤ .09), especially when compared with pSES-related differences in cognitive skills (fluid intelligence) and sex-related differences in personality. The returns to Conscientiousness—the personality trait most relevant to achievement—in terms of its relations to academic achievement were higher in higher- versus lower-SES students. Trait–achievement relations did not vary as a function of pSES for the other Big Five traits. Overall, both types of inequality were limited in magnitude. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and practice and delineate directions for further research.

中文翻译：

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学生社会情感技能的两种社会不平等形式：大五人格特质的水平及其与学业成绩的关联是否取决于父母的社会经济地位？

一些研究人员和政策制定者主张更加注重培养社会情感技能，以期帮助学生在学业上取得成功，尤其是那些社会弱势群体。其他人警告说，这可能会增加而不是减少社会不平等，因为有利于成就的人格特征本身分布不均，不利于社会弱势学生。本文为这场辩论做出了贡献。分析来自德国国家教育小组研究 (NEPS) 的 9,300 名九年级学生的代表性大规模数据，并使用大五人格特质作为社会情感技能的衡量标准，我们阐明了社会不平等的两个相关但不同的方面社会情感技能：第一，有利于成就的人格特质水平是否会随着学生父母社会经济地位 (pSES) 的不同而变化？其次，人格特质在特质-成就关系方面的回报是否随着 pSES 的函数而变化？结果表明，具有不同 pSES 的学生之间的大五特征差异很小（.04 ≤ |r| ≤ .09），尤其是与 pSES 相关的认知技能（流体智力）差异和性别相关的人格差异相比。就其与学业成绩的关系而言，责任心（与成就最相关的人格特质）的回报在高 SES 学生中高于低 SES 学生。对于其他五大特质，特质-成就关系没有随 pSES 的变化而变化。总体而言，两种类型的不平等程度都有限。