Abstract:
Academic effort is an important prerequisite for achieving academic success, which sets essential framework conditions for cumulative advantages over the lifespan (Spengler et al., 2015). Therefore, understanding the determinants of effort is of great importance to researchers as well as various educational stakeholders. Psychologists identified two person characteristics as key determinants of academic effort, namely conscientiousness and interest (e.g., Jansen et al., 2016; Mammadov, 2022). Conscientiousness, a personality trait mainly researched in the field of personality psychology, involves being goal-oriented, orderly, self-controlled, and responsible across different contexts and situations (Roberts et al., 2014). Consequently, students with high conscientiousness tend to work hard and persistently across various school domains (e.g., Trautwein & Lüdtke, 2007). On the other hand, interest is a motivational construct primarily studied in educational psychology (e.g., Renninger & Hidi, 2016). It represents a positive relationship to an object (such as a topic or activity) and reflects the individual's enjoyment and desire to continue engaging with the object (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Interest is associated with positive emotions and, therefore, has a self-reinforcing effect, leading individuals to engage with the object of their interest consistently and repeatedly (Murayama et al., 2019).
Despite the significant importance of both conscientiousness and interest within their respective disciplines, they have traditionally been studied independently due to their different research traditions. Addressing this gap, Trautwein et al. (2015) investigated the interplay of these two constructs in predicting academic effort. Their findings revealed a compensatory relation between the two, indicating that high interest can compensate for low conscientiousness and vice versa. As a result, they developed the Conscientiousness × Interest Compensation (CONIC) model (Trautwein et al., 2019).
Theoretically, the CONIC model proposes that conscientiousness and interest both function as driving, self-regulatory forces that lead individuals to make sustained efforts and, thus, to achieve their academic goals. Due to the distinct characteristics of conscientiousness and interest, they assume different mechanisms by which they operate. Conscientiousness acts as an internal "push factor" that pushes the individual through difficulties and obstacles. In contrast, interest acts as a "pull factor" that stimulates and energizes individuals to overcome difficulties and obstacles without being perceived as strenuous.
Empirically, there is already some research confirming the compensatory relation between conscientiousness and interest in the school setting among German-speaking high school students across various subjects (Trautwein et al., 2015; Rieger et al., 2022; Song et al., 2020). In an initial extension study, this compensatory relation was not only observed in predicting academic effort but also in predicting school grades (Song et al., 2020). Furthermore, the model was expanded to include utility value as another predictor instead of interest (Song et al., 2020). Nonetheless, the CONIC model is still in its early stages, and further research is needed to consolidate it. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to contribute to this ongoing research and refine the validity and applicability of the model.
For this purpose, replication and generalization studies play a central role from a research theory perspective. They provide the opportunity to validate previous findings and explore the broader scope of the CONIC model, which contributes to the credibility of science by producing robust results. Moreover, applying Open Science practices can further enhance the impact and reliability of these contributions.
The present dissertation includes four studies that aim to replicate, extend, and generalize the CONIC model, focusing on exploring potential boundary conditions of the model. All of the dissertation's studies investigate the relationship between conscientiousness and interest in predicting effort-related outcomes but vary in terms of their research characteristics, encompassing different samples, study designs, measures, and contexts. More specifically, the studies include samples of different ages (university and college students, adults) and countries (U.S., Austria); observational and experimental studies conducted in the field, online, or in a laboratory; various measures of conscientiousness, interest, and effort, as well as related constructs; and different contexts (U.S. school system, occupational context, laboratory setting, online context). Furthermore, the studies were conducted with consideration of Open Science practices.
The first study (Examining the Conscientiousness × Interest Compensation (CONIC) Model With Similar Constructs in High School and College Students) tested the CONIC model in both a high school sample and a college sample from the United States using an observational study design. It aimed to replicate the extensions proposed by Song et al. (2020) by testing the inclusion of utility value as an additional predictor and achievement as another outcome variable. Additionally, the study explored whether the compensatory relationship holds when substituting grit for conscientiousness and overall task value or utility value for interest. Furthermore, the study examined the models for both science and math effort as well as achievement. Overall, the findings supported the replicability of the extensions proposed by Song et al. (2020), demonstrated the generalizability across U.S. American and older student samples, and confirmed the extensivity of the CONIC model for incorporating grit and overall task value as additional predictor variables. However, the results also suggest that the predictive links are strongest when including interest and conscientiousness as predictors.
The second study (The Interplay of Conscientiousness and Interest in Predicting Achievement Outcomes in a Lab Setting) investigated the CONIC model using a sample of German university students within a laboratory setting. Conscientiousness, task-specific interest, and their interaction term were used to predict student performance in five different digital learning tasks (i.e., mastery of the task topic assessed with a knowledge test). Overall, task-specific interest positively predicted task performance, and the interactions of conscientiousness and interest negatively predicted task performance. However, there were no positive main effects of conscientiousness in predicting task performance; instead, the effects were either null or negative. The overall pattern of the results supports the generalizability of the compensatory mechanism for learning tasks in controlled laboratory settings. However, the results also point to the limitations of the predictive power of conscientiousness in this context.
The third study (The Conscientiousness × Interest Compensation Model Predicting Effortful Behavior in an Experimental Task) tested the CONIC model in adults using an experimental online setting. The experimental design included self-rated effort as well as several other indicators of effortful behavior (e.g., time measures) to assess generalizability across measures beyond self-report. The sample was recruited from the online platform Prolific. The results revealed that task interestingness predicted different measures of effort. Conscientiousness showed a positive relationship with some of the effort measures, though not across all measures. However, no compensatory relation was found between conscientiousness and interest predicting the different indicators of effortful behavior. Therefore, the results did not confirm the CONIC model in this study. Consequently, the experimental design of the study, the online context, and adulthood are discussed as boundary conditions of the CONIC model.
The fourth study (Interest is a Stronger Predictor Than Conscientiousness For Teachers' Intensity in Engaging in Professional Development) applied the CONIC model to predict teacher's professional development (PD) intensity using different interests (i.e., teachers' general interest in teacher activities, teachers' interest in specific areas of teacher activities, teachers' interest in PD) in a cross-sectional as well as a longitudinal design. The sample consisted of teachers from Austria. Overall, the different interests showed positive relations with PD intensity. However, no positive relations of conscientiousness and no compensatory interaction effects were found. The results suggest that the CONIC model does not hold for teachers' PD intensity.
The findings are summarized and discussed in terms of their contribution to further consolidation and refinement of the CONIC model. Furthermore, implications for the validity of the CONIC model and directions for future research are discussed.
Interest