Personality Prototypes Among High-Achieving Black Undergraduates

Abstract

Personality prototypes have gained more attention as a unit of personality analysis in the past decade. However, relatively few studies have looked at the personality structure of ethnic minorities in general and Black/African Americans specifically using this method of analysis. The current study utilized a large sample (n = 951) of Black/African American undergraduates. The scale scores and relevant work behaviors of the Workplace Personality Inventory (WPI) were analyzed via k-means to develop a prototypic outline of the three personality prototypes (i.e., resilient, undercontrolled, and overcontrolled.) Further, research relating to high achieving Black/African American undergraduates is also sparse. Thus, this study analyzed the cumulative grade point averages (CGPA) of the participants by gender and cluster type. The results show the replicability of the sample into the three personality prototypes as well as the statistical significance of gender and CGPA. The practical implications and limitations of the current study are discussed