Individual Differences in Students' Preferences for Lecturers' Personalities

This study examines the relationship between students' personality and intelligence scores with their preferences for the personality profile of their lecturers. Student ratings (N = 136) of 30 lecturer trait characteristics were coded into an internally reliable Big Five taxonomy (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Descriptive statistics showed that, overall, students tended to prefer conscientious, open, and stable lecturers, though correlations revealed that these preferences were largely a function of students' own personality traits. Thus, open students preferred open lecturers, while agreeable students preferred agreeable lecturers. There was evidence of a similarity effect for both Agreeableness and Openness. In addition, less intelligent students were more likely to prefer agreeable lecturers than their more intelligent counterparts were. A series of regressions showed that individual differences are particularly good predictors of preferences for agreeable lecturers, and modest, albeit significant, predictors of preferences for open and neurotic lecturers. Educational and vocational implications are considered