 42. Some Contributions of Economics to the Study of Personality 881
Skills are not set in stone. They change 
over the life cycle and can be enhanced by 
education, mentoring, parenting, and envi -
ronmental influences to different degrees at 
different ages.
Scores on achievement tests capture both 
cognitive and personality skills. Children 
who are more academically motivated and 
more open to experience learn more and 
have higher test scores. More motivated chil -
dren also try harder on achievement tests.
The studies surveyed here demonstrate 
that the growing partnership between econ -
omists and psychologists is contributing 
greatly to knowledge. The fields have a lot 
to learn from each other. Recent evidence 
changes the way we think about the sources 
of individual differences in life performance 
and ways to design effective policies for 
equalizing opportunities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported in part by National 
Institutes of Health Grant Nos. R24AG048081 
and R37HD065072, funding from the Deutsche 
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Re -
search Foundation) under Germany’s Excel -
lence Strategy-EXC 2126/1-390838866, a seed 
grant from the briq Institute on Behavior and 
Inequality, many years of funding from the Spen -
cer Foundation, a grant from FAIR (Centre for 
Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality 
and Rationality) at NHH Norwegian School of 
Economics, and in-kind sponsorship through 
partnerships from the Institute for Economic 
and Social Research at Jinan University and the 
TrygFonden Centre for Child Research at Aarhus 
University. The views expressed in this chapter 
are solely those of the authors and do not neces -
sarily represent those of the funders or the of -
ficial views of the National Institutes of Health.
NOTES
 1. The Programme for International Student 
Assessment (PISA) evaluates student performance in 
math, science, and reading across countries, and its 
results attract a lot of media attention and influence 
policy. Scores from the year 2000 PISA test led Ger -
many to reevaluate its educational system and intro -
duce a variety of reforms (Grek, 2009). The creators 
of the original PISA tests called them literacy tests, 
not achievement tests, because PISA was designed 
to capture how knowledge can be applied to other contexts (Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development [OECD], 2014b). However, this 
was also the goal of the original achievement tests. 
We are unable to find any studies establishing that 
the original PISA measures were fundamentally dif -
ferent skills than those measured by achievement 
tests. Recently, however, PISA 2012 has added 
some component tests designed to capture aspects 
of noncognitive skills, including openness, locus of 
control, and motivation (OECD, 2014a).
 2. See Heckman and Kautz (2014a) for a de -
tailed discussion of the GED program and an evalu -
ation of its benefits.
 3. For histories of achievement tests see Quinn 
(2014) and Heckman and Kautz (2014a).
 4. See Heckman and Kautz (2012). IQ tests 
alone explain at most 7% of this variability. Other 
work by Borghans, Golsteyn, Heckman, and 
Humphries (2016) shows that achievement tests ex -
plain a smaller proportion of lifetime success.
 5. See Bound, Brown, and Mathiowetz (2001).
 6. See the studies by Borghans et al. (2008) 
and Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman, and Kautz 
(2011). The modern literature traces back to Bowles 
and Gintis (1976), and Bowles, Gintis, and Osborne 
(2001). An important study in sociology is the work 
of Peter Mueser reported in Jencks (1979).
 7. For reviews, see Heckman and Kautz (2012); 
Heckman and Kautz (2014a, 2014b); Almlund et 
al. (2011); Borghans et al. (2008), and B. Roberts, 
Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, and Goldberg (2007).
 8. See Kautz and Zanoni (2019).
 9. See Carroll (1993) and Ackerman and 
Heggestad (1997) for discussions.
10. See, for example, Nisbett et al. (2012).
11. See R. Roberts et al. (2000).
12. See Raven, Raven, and Court (1988). The 
high correlation between scores on intelligence tests 
and scores on achievement tests is in part due to 
the fact that both require intelligence and knowl -
edge. Fluid intelligence promotes the acquisition of 
crystallized intelligence. Common developmental 
factors affect the formation of both skills.
13. Carroll (1993) and Ackerman and Hegges -
tad (1997) discuss more disaggregated facets of cog -
nitive ability.
14. This practice is true even among leading pro -
fessional psychologists. For example, all of these 
measures are assumed to capture intelligence in 
Flynn (2007), Nisbett (2009), and Nisbett et al. 
(2012).
15. See Heckman and Kautz (2012).
16. See Borghans, Golsteyn, Heckman, and 
Humphries (2011a).
17. It is an irony of the testing literature that high 
school grades are more predictive of first-year col -
lege performance than standardized achievement 
test (SAT) scores (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 
2009). The SAT and related tests were once thought 