 13. Personality in Adolescence  313
Prinzie, 2013, following cohorts ages 9–12 
years across 5 years; Prinzie et al., 2003, 
2004). Adolescents’ personalities showed 
systematic associations with specific parent -
ing behaviors, such as positive and harsh 
parenting, suggesting mutual influencing 
effects. Both traits and parenting showed 
main effects explaining internalizing and 
externalizing outcomes, but adolescents’ 
traits and parenting behaviors also inter -
acted, demonstrating enhancing effects. For 
example, for those scoring lower on benevo -
lence (agreeableness) and conscientiousness, 
harsh parenting seemed to have detrimen -
tal effects on externalizing behavior (De 
 Clercq, Van Leeuwen, De Fruyt, Van Hiel, 
& Mervielde, 2008; Van Leeuwen, Mer -
vielde, et al., 2004), whereas no such effects 
were observed for those with moderate to 
high scores on agreeableness and conscien -
tiousness.
Finally, traits of the FFM have also been 
used to study bullying and describe the per -
sonalities of bullies, bullies-  victims, defend -
ers, and bystanders. De Bolle and Tackett 
(2013) examined maternal personality rat -
ings of bullies and victims in a sample of 
660 children (mean age = 11, SD  = 0.62), 
of which 178 were classified as uninvolved, 
45 were classified as pure bullies, 67 as pure 
victims ( N = 67), and 23 as bully victims. 
Low agreeableness and low conscientious -
ness were both linked to not only enacting 
more bullying but also to being more vic -
timized, as rated by the children themselves, 
their parents, and their teachers. High lev -
els of imagination (openness) were linked to 
lower self- and parental ratings of bullying 
and to lower teacher ratings of victimiza -
tion. Neuroticism (or negative emotional -
ity) was positively related to victimization 
across raters, indicating that anxious ado -
lescents are more likely to be picked on by 
bullies. Finally, extraversion did not show 
any major associations with either bullying 
or victimization. In summary, those low on 
emotional stability have an increased risk 
for being victimized, whereas those low on 
agreeableness and conscientiousness have 
an increased likelihood to end up as either 
bullies or victims (or being both bullied and 
bullying other children). Alonso and Rome -
ro (2017) further examined personality pro -
files of bullying as well as cyberbullying in a sample of 910 adolescents ranging from ages 
12 to 19. They found that all of the FFM 
dimensions were involved in describing dif -
ferences among bullies, victims, and bully/
victim groups.
Class and  School
Traits not only impact upon individual level 
and relationship variables, but they have 
also been also studied in their connection 
to understanding school behavior, learning, 
and educational achievement. The meta- 
analytic work by Poropat (2009) has shown 
that all personality traits predict academic 
performance in primary education, with 
conscientiousness being predictive across 
primary ( r = .28), secondary ( r = .21) and 
tertiary ( r = .23) education, equaling the va -
lidity of intelligence in secondary ( r = .24) 
and tertiary ( r = .23) education. Openness 
predicted academic achievement in primary 
education ( r = .24), but its effect decreased 
by almost half in secondary ( r = .12) and to 
near a fourth ( r = .07) in tertiary education. 
MacCann, Lipnevich, Poropath, Wiemers, 
and Roberts (2015) analyzed both self- and 
parent-  reported conscientiousness, differ -
entiating approach-  related facets (indus -
triousness, perseverance, proactivity, task 
planning) and avoidance-  related facets (cau -
tiousness, control, perfectionism, tidiness) 
in 410 high school students. They found 
that parental reports of personality showed 
higher validities for predicting grade point 
average (GPA) than did self-  reports, and this 
parental-  report advantage held also for pre -
dicting school life variables such as number 
of club memberships, discipline infractions 
during the previous year, absenteeism dur -
ing the previous month, holding school of -
fice, and being on the honor roll. Differences 
in reporting biases are explained in terms of 
the different types of information that ado -
lescents and parents are relying on to make 
personality descriptions.
Poropat (2016) updated his meta-  analysis 
on traits and academic performance with 
observer reports of personality, showing 
that not only observer reports on all FFM 
traits predicted academic performance in 
primary school, but also observer ratings of 
agreeableness (.10), emotional stability (.18) 
and extraversion (.05) were predictive in sec -