The Effect of the Big Five Personality Traits on College Major Choice: Evidence from a Dutch longitudinal youth cohort study

We present a simple theoretical framework in which we allow individuals to choose a college major based on comparative advantage considerations, but also on the basis of tastes for actions related to college majors and their occupational fields. Using data of a large Dutch longitudinal youth cohort study, we are able to estimate the effect of personality measured at age 12 on college major choice six years later, circumventing the endogeneity problem of contemporaneous personality measures. We examine how the probability of choosing a certain college major category varies with personality traits captured by the Five-Factor Personality Inventory – extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and autonomy. We find that extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability and autonomy indeed matter for college major choice, and that the associated effect sizes are comparable to and in some cases larger than those of cognitive skills such as math ability, verbal ability and information processing ability. We discuss which implications these findings have for policies aimed at managing individuals’ college major choices.