Using personality and cognitive ability to predict academic achievement in a young adult sample

► Examine how personality and cognitive ability predict academic achievement. ► Cognitive ability, Conscientiousness, and Openness all predicted reading and math. ► Agreeableness predicted of reading, while Extraversion predicted math. ► Personality and cognitive ability worked independently to predict reading. ► Openness and Extraversion moderated cognitive ability to predict math. This study examined the relationship between cognitive ability, personality, and academic achievement in post-secondary students, using latent variable models. Testing both simple and complex relationships, we found that cognitive ability and personality predicted reading achievement independently, but that they interact when predicting math achievement – at least in the Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience domains.