Academic Achievement and Grades: Sex, Bias, and Traits

Are boys failing in school due to anti-male bias?

Much has been written about the gap in academic performance between boys and girls. A good recent summary by Tom Sarrouf at the Institute of Family Studies can be found here, so I won’t go in depth covering the basics. Girls get better grades than boys do. Boys are more likely to fail classes, get suspended, and drop out of school. This is not a new trend. A 2014 meta-analysis (Voyer & Voyer) of 502 effect sizes found a consistent, but moderate, female grade advantage (d = .23) that did not vary by age cohort. This advantage was larger for language-based subjects (d = .37) and smaller for math-based subjects (d = .07), consistent with intelligence research showing a verbal advantage in women, but less consistent with the expected male advantage in spatial ability (Halpern & Wai, 2020). Men also have greater variability on assessments of intelligence, academic performance, and standardized testing; there are more men on the tails, or more men who are very smart and very stupid (Machin & Pekkarinen, 2008). 

Given this, we are left with a puzzle. We shouldn’t expect much of a grade gap between boys and girls based on cognitive ability. Alternatively, we might expect a grade gap favoring women in verbal-based subjects and a grade gap favoring men in math-based subjects. Women are beating men across the board academically, but sex differences in intelligence are not a good explanation for why. Intelligence and academic achievement are closely correlated, but women are not more intelligent than men.

Any time we see a disparity in outcome, a popular hypothesis to explain the disparity is the bias hypothesis. The underperformance of any and every group is attributed to bias. If minority groups receive worse grades, or if there are fewer women in STEM, it’s due to bias. Without bias, we like to think that every group would perform equally.

So, unsurprisingly, bias has also emerged as a hypothesis to explain why men are doing worse in school.

A highly publicized study by Di Liberto et al. (2022) found a bias against boys in grading. Bias, in this context, was assumed by assessing a difference between standardized test scores and class grades. Boys didn’t perform worse than girls on national standardized tests, but did receive lower class grades than girls, therefore (according to the researchers) boys’ lower grades were due to bias. The bias was quantified as .19 of a standard deviation in language subjects and .12 of a standard deviation in math subjects for primary school students. For middle school students, the bias was .09 of a standard deviation in language and .22 of a standard deviation in math.

Let’s make this easier to interpret. This magnitude of bias would reduce a boy’s grade by approximately 3 points if the maximum score is 100. A boy who received a 97% would now have a 94%. A boy who received a 74% would now receive a 71%. 

In other words, grading bias is a very bad explanation for why so many boys are failing at school. It’s a very small effect. 

In fact, “bias” is not even a certain explanation. Classroom grades and standardized tests are different things. What are some alternative explanations? For a difference so small between two distinct assessments, it could be anything. It could be a difference in classroom and test material, boys’ behavior, or even differences in room temperature across the year. This line of research makes the same error as much research on “bias:” it simply assumes bias exists when differential outcomes or inequality show up. 

This line of research and methodology has been replicated. It is robust; men and boys get lower classroom grades than you might expect from standardized test scores.

Also robust is the size of the effect: very small. Grading bias does not turn A students into C students.

Bias is the go-to explanation for the “woke” and so-called “social justice warriors.” It’s the near-exclusive nurture, environmentalist, or “blank slate” position. These are individuals who prefer to attribute outcomes to external, rather than internal, causes. Activists are higher in self-perceptions of victimhood, have a more externally-oriented locus of control (they are less agentic), and also score higher in narcissism. These traits, among others, explain why they prefer to see their own poor life outcomes as a consequence of things that happen to them rather than their own individual behaviors and decisions.

The manosphere, too, has its own social justice activists: Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). They are, in many ways, such a spitting image of feminist activists that they simply invert the claims of feminists to say, “Actually men are the victims of the thing that feminists claim women are victims of.” Like “woke” and feminist activists they are highly preoccupied with bias. Except, to them, it’s a bias toward men. 

The truth is that both men and women experience bias in different ways. However, the various biases we all experience are less interesting to me than why people who feel that the entire world is turned against them feel that way.

Sociologists and social justice warriors are interested in navel-gazing about how society victimizes people. Psychologists are more interested in individual traits. We live in the same society, but not everyone feels like a persecuted victim: individual traits are better explanations for self-perceptions of victimhood than armchair philosophizing about how society is persecuting you.

To illustrate with an example, we live in what has been called an “obesogenic” society. High calorie food is easily available; it is very easy to get fat. But not everyone gets fat. Some people are, simply, built different. They don’t overeat, either because they don’t experience hunger cues in a caloric surplus or they have the discipline not to overeat when they are hungry. They have more motivation to hit the gym; they maintain a higher muscular mass, and expend more calories. The environment is the same for us all, but it is within each of us where the meaningful differences reside. 

Genes play a big role here. The heritability of most traits rests around 50%, it may be even higher for cognitive ability, and the heritability of obesity is 60-70%. (Which, in the case of obesity, does not mean your genes generate fat out of thin air. Obese people behave differently, they eat more, and their genes drive their behavior.)

Your genes also play a big role in your academic outcomes.

The grade gap between men and women is a much less interesting, and less important, question than the gap between people who fail and people who excel. The boys who get expelled from school and the boys who become the football captain and the valedictorian are very different. Bias may explain some small portion of variance in the average grade gap, but it is a terrible explanation for the large gap in individual academic outcomes.

The point is this: bias is often used as an activist cope. You didn’t fail at school because it is racist, nor because it is “feminized,” nor because your teachers are out to get you. Women don’t avoid STEM because of stereotype threat. Individual differences are the best predictors of academic and life outcomes. Your traits determine what you do, how well you do, and where you go with your life.

Who Gets Good Grades, And Why

Intelligence (IQ), as well as other cognitive measurements, remain the best predictors of grades and academic performance, explaining more of the variance than any other variable. In one meta-analysis of g and school grades, the population correlation between intelligence and grades was .54 (Roth et al., 2015). A more recent meta-analysis (Kriegbaum et al., 2018) found 24% of the variance in school grades was explained by intelligence and motivation together, with 16% uniquely explained by motivation. A twin study (Johnson et al., 2006) found 70% of the variance in educational outcomes could be attributed to genetic influences, with 56% of the genetic contribution shared with intelligence.

Personality traits add more explanatory power for grade outcomes. Not only must you be smart enough to do the work, you also need to actually do it. One explanation for the grade gap between men and women is personality; when accounting for conscientiousness and subject-specific interest (men prefer things, women prefer people), the grade gap disappears (Triventi et al., 2023).

Conscientiousness is the personality trait that allows you to sit still, pay attention, and turn in your homework. Women score higher in conscientiousness, as well as openness, a trait associated with enjoying school environments and learning new material, and agreeableness, a trait associated with lower classroom disruption and less antisocial behavior in school (De Bolle et al., 2015). One meta-analysis found correlations between conscientiousness (.22), agreeableness (.07), and openness (.12) with academic performance (Poropat, 2009). A more recent meta-analysis found conscientiousness explained 28% of the variance in academic performance, even after controlling for cognitive ability (Mammadov, 2022).

We can look at other personality traits that predict grades, as well. For example, having a more internally-oriented locus of control (having high agency) is associated with better grades and better standardized test scores (Kirkpatrick et al., 2008), as well as studying more (Bodill & Roberts, 2013). An internal locus of control is also associated with higher intelligence (Von Stumm et al., 2009; Furnham & Chang, 2016) and the children of mothers with a high internal locus of control are also more intelligent (Golding et al., 2017). One early study of academically gifted children found a very large (d = 1.37) difference in locus of control between the gifted and regular students, with gifted students being more internally-oriented (Lynne, 1979).

Incidentally, this can also tip you off when you encounter ideological communities that are characterized by a high external locus of control: they probably don’t consist of the smartest and most successful people.

Grit, a trait consisting of the perseverance of effort and passion for a specific goal, also predicts academic achievement and grades. A cross-cultural meta-analysis of grit and academic achievement found that perseverance of effort had a moderate, but significant, association with academic outcomes (r = .21). The subject-interest facet of grit, however, was only weakly related with achievement (r = .07). This hints at another point: being very passionate about school is not the most important contributor to doing well in school.

Relatedly, smart kids and adults are not failing in school because they are bored. “Too cool for school,” or in this case “too smart for school,” is a cope that has existed ever since education was first mandated for youths. Children who get bored in school don’t have higher cognitive ability — and boredom is found equally among the worst and best students (Golle et al., 2022). Boredom does have a moderate association with lower grades (r = -.24) (Tze et al., 2016), but individuals who become bored easily are also less cognitively flexible, less persistent, and less able to emotionally regulate (Leong & Schneller, 1993). Boredom itself can be a symptom of poor cognition (Conroy et al., 2010). It isn’t necessarily that boredom produces poor performance; the same traits that make you prone to boredom are also associated with poor attention and cognition. Boredom can be understood as an attentional failure, the inability to focus on a task for a prolonged period of time and an emotional drive for stimulation (Raffaelli et al., 2018). In many ways, overwhelming boredom in a classroom environment might be understood as a learning disability similar to attention deficit disorder (and, indeed, people with learning and cognitive disabilities get bored much more often in classroom environments).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all traits that predict academic achievement. The best predictors are at the top: cognitive ability and the five factor model of personality. Just as personality could be examined trait-by-trait, so too could cognitive ability be examined beyond intelligence (for example, verbal working memory correlates with academic grades at around .5 as well). At the end of the day, however, some of these are overlapping and indexing the same thing (for example, grit may just be conscientiousness).

The important thing to take home is this: bias doesn’t explain why some students get straight A’s and some students get straight C’s, but cognitive ability and personality does. Individual differences, in this case, are more important and better explanations than the environment.

How To Study For Good Grades

A great deal of research, good and bad, has been conducted on learning, studying, and ultimately getting good grades. Without going into the details of specific study techniques, I will give you a very rough evidence-based outline for how to get good grades: 

  1. Attend all of your classes, participate in them, engage with the material, and pay attention.
  2. Take very good notes during class.
  3. Read all of your assignments and do all of your homework.
  4. Practice for your math tests frequently. Practice your coding frequently. You will probably need more than the class materials for this. 
  5. Study multiple times throughout the day, dispersed across the day, and don’t procrastinate or cram: study in the morning when you wake up, during the day, and before you go to sleep for brief blocks of time.
  6. Take an interest in your class material; go above and beyond. Read books related to your field for leisure.
  7. Review all of your very good notes, or practice your math problems, immediately before your tests.
  8. Teach and discuss your material with others. Form a study group for your classes and programs. Talk about the class material the same way you would talk about a hobby you enjoy.

There is no shortcut. Academic performance is a factor of the time you spend doing the work and your innate abilities. If you think the entire world is biased and against you, well, all the more effort you must put into overcoming the world.

References

Bodill, K., & Roberts, L. D. (2013). Implicit theories of intelligence and academic locus of control as predictors of studying behaviour. Learning and individual differences, 27, 163-166.

Conroy, R. M., Golden, J., Jeffares, I., O’Neill, D., & McGee, H. (2010). Boredom-proneness, loneliness, social engagement and depression and their association with cognitive function in older people: a population study. Psychology, health & medicine, 15(4), 463-473.

De Bolle, M., De Fruyt, F., McCrae, R. R., Löckenhoff, C. E., Costa Jr, P. T., Aguilar-Vafaie, M. E., … & Terracciano, A. (2015). The emergence of sex differences in personality traits in early adolescence: A cross-sectional, cross-cultural study. Journal of personality and social psychology, 108(1), 171.

Di Liberto, A., Casula, L., & Pau, S. (2022). Grading practices, gender bias and educational outcomes: evidence from Italy. Education Economics, 30(5), 481-508.

Furnham, A., & Cheng, H. (2016). Childhood intelligence, self-esteem, early trait neuroticism and behaviour adjustment as predictors of locus of control in teenagers. Personality and Individual Differences, 95, 178-182.

Golding, J., Gregory, S., Ellis, G. L., Iles-Caven, Y., & Nowicki, S. (2017). Prenatal internal locus of control is positively associated with offspring IQ, mediated through parenting behavior, prenatal lifestyle and social circumstances. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1429.

Golle, J., Flaig, M., Jaggy, A. K., & Göllner, R. (2022). Who’s bored in school? The relationships between academic boredom, general cognitive ability, and intrinsic value in math and language classes in primary school children. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 25(5), 1125-1149.

Halpern, D. F., & Wai, J. (2020). Sex differences in intelligence. The Cambridge handbook of intelligence, 317-345. 

Johnson, W., McGue, M., & Iacono, W. G. (2006). Genetic and environmental influences on academic achievement trajectories during adolescence. Developmental psychology, 42(3), 514.

Kirkpatrick, M. A., Stant, K., Downes, S., & Gaither, L. (2008). Perceived locus of control and academic performance: Broadening the construct’s applicability. Journal of College Student Development, 49(5), 486-496.

Kriegbaum, K., Becker, N., & Spinath, B. (2018). The relative importance of intelligence and motivation as predictors of school achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 25, 120-148.

Lam, K. K. L., & Zhou, M. (2022). Grit and academic achievement: A comparative cross-cultural meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(3), 597.

Leong, F. T., & Schneller, G. R. (1993). Boredom proneness: Temperamental and cognitive components. Personality and individual differences, 14(1), 233-239.

Lynne, J. H. (1979). A comparison of the locus of control of children in the gifted and average ranges of intelligence. The Ohio State University.

Machin, S., & Pekkarinen, T. (2008). Global sex differences in test score variability. Science, 322(5906), 1331-1332.

Mammadov, S. (2022). Big Five personality traits and academic performance: A meta‐analysis. Journal of personality, 90(2), 222-255.

Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological bulletin, 135(2), 322.

Raffaelli, Q., Mills, C., & Christoff, K. (2018). The knowns and unknowns of boredom: A review of the literature. Experimental brain research, 236, 2451-2462.

Roth, B., Becker, N., Romeyke, S., Schäfer, S., Domnick, F., & Spinath, F. M. (2015). Intelligence and school grades: A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 53, 118-137.

Triventi, M., Lievore, I., & Dian, M. Why are girls better graded in school? The role of students’ personality traits, school-related attitudes, and behavior.

Tze, V. M., Daniels, L. M., & Klassen, R. M. (2016). Evaluating the relationship between boredom and academic outcomes: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 28(1), 119-144.

Von Stumm, S., Gale, C. R., Batty, G. D., & Deary, I. J. (2009). Childhood intelligence, locus of control and behaviour disturbance as determinants of intergenerational social mobility: British Cohort Study 1970. Intelligence, 37(4), 329-340.

5 comments
  1. Seems to me that grading bias could be just one component of a larger anti-male bias at school/in society. E.g. perhaps the school shortened recess, due to matriarchical bias of female teachers not knowing that boys on average need time to run around due to their traits. In other words, society’s matriarchical bias tuned school towards the personality traits of girls. Or perhaps the fact that girls are raised to be more conscientious than boys indicates some underlying matriarchical bias, e.g. punishing boys more frequently in the classroom could lead to lower conscientiousness.

  2. I love reading these articles in this website as someone who studied engineering, and while I have not read all of them, I’ve read enough to get a trend of this website’s goals to help guide people into a science based exploration in dating and am kinda curious about this article’s purpose being posted under a website called “date psychology”.

    I understand that MGTOW/MRA/Redpill or “social justice” communities can have a certain viewpoint that as “incorrect” or toxic that is not about dating. Usually these articles target potentially misleading assumptions pretty well In regards to dating but this article seems to be too far removed from the topic of dating to attack what you disagree with.

    This article is also extremely dismissive about bias in population, just saying individual differences are more important. Both can be important! Women don’t just avoid stem due to personality interests. There are evidence based interventions that increase women’s participation in stem, along side that personality isn’t only genetic. Culture heavily affects personality, and personality itself can change. Sociology is just as an important field as psychology just as geometry is no less valid than algebra. There can be incorrect assumptions or bad faith actors on both sides.

    The bias is most clearly visible here:

    “Sociologists and social justice warriors are interested in navel-gazing about how society victimizes people. Psychologists are more interested in individual traits. “

    You clearly have a biasness towards having psychology and are very dismissive to a whole field, let’s not forget that psychology is also social science like sociology. It’s no different than saying:

    Psychologists are often preoccupied with navel-gazing about individual traits and internal processes to cope with reality, ignoring the broader societal and systemic factors that shape behavior.

    This article’s quality is far below the other articles, and is far more off topic from dating than any I’ve read here. Perhaps the other articles had a similar amount of biases but I didn’t realize, but for future articles I just wish to be more like the more recent ones

  3. I think the “problem” would be instantly solved if entrance to higher education institutions were solely or mostly based on nationally standardized tests that are evaluated without knowing the gender or background of the student.
    In many countries that is not the case, high school grades and the score of one or more standardized tests are taken into account; in my country it is a whole system in itself, where your student past will haunt you even if you are entering school as an adult who left school years ago.
    Other people have proposed that directly boys enter school a year later, since apparently the system has become allergic to letting children repeat grades, even when they are clearly far behind their peers.
    But I think you and I both know that such a practical solution would not satisfy the male social justice warriors, all groups that depend on an injustice existing do not want its solution and if it ceases to exist they find another non-existent problem. Right here there is already one claiming that it is matriarchal to shorten recess, as if girls do not benefit from leisure.

  4. I don’t get your point. MRA’s claims of bias in school isn’t just about grading but the societal importance of studies itself. There’s a huge academic inflation going on while vocational schools are being completely neglected. In my country most programming jobs require a bachelor or master degree even though programming isn’t any more technical than, say, cooking. Policies that encourage vocational education would not only help men, they might also save a lot of young people, men or women, from student debt (in the US).

    Also your criticism of people with an external locus of control is ironic given than the results you cite actually JUSTIFY having an external locus of control : if grades are overwhelmingly the result of both intellectual ability and personnality traits, both of which remain stable throughout one’s lifetime, then it justifies having an external locus of control.

    (I have a master’s degree in engineering so what I say is NOT the result of resentment)

    1. Men and women require a degree to work in many things, so I don’t know how you can sustain the idea that this is a bias against men or that this is rooted in a sexual bias, rather than simply wanting to do business with people’s education.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like