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How did people feel, think, and behave during the first weeks of the corona crisis? When in March 2020 the corona virus started to spread in many countries and governments took measures to reduce the rate of infections, people suddenly had to adjust to a completely new situation. Personality psychology predicts that depending on their personality people respond differently to such a new situation (Rauthmann, Jones &Sherman, 2016; Rauthmann, 2013; Rauthmann, Sherman, Nave & Funder, 2015; Wrzus, Wagner, Riediger, 2016; Anglim, Horwood, Smillie, Marrero & Wood, 2020; Connor-Smith, Flachsbart, 2007). More specifically, the Big Five personality traits openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism should predict how people feel, think, and behave during these difficult times (Allport,1961; McCrae & Costa, 2008). The aim of this paper is to investigate associations between the Big Five personality traits and people’s feelings, thoughts, and behavior during the first three weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end we collected data of about 7,000 German students about their feelings, thoughts, and behavior in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic from 16th March until 21st April 2020. This period covers the time span when the German government announced its measures against the further spread of the disease.

This paper presents evidence from a large-scale study on gender differences in expected wages before labor market entry. Based on data for over 15,000 students, we document a significant and large gender gap in wage expectations that closely resembles actual wage differences, prevails across subgroups, and along the entire distribution. To understand the underlying causes and determinants, we relate expected wages to sorting into majors, industries, and occupations, child-rearing plans, perceived and actual ability, personality, perceived discrimination, and negotiation styles. Our findings indicate that sorting and negotiation styles affect the gender gap in wage expectations much more than prospective child-related labor force interruptions. Given the importance of wage expectations for labor market decisions, household bargaining, and wage setting, our results provide an explanation for persistent gender inequalities.

Personality traits are influential in individual decision-making but have been overlooked in economic models of migration. This paper investigates the relation between Big Five personality traits and individuals’ migration intentions among alternative destinations that vary in their culture distance. We hypothesize that Big Five personality traits may alter individuals’ migration decision and destination choice through their influence on perceived psychic costs and benefits of migration. We test our hypotheses using the Fachkraft survey conducted among university students in Germany. We find that extraversion and openness are positively associated with migration intentions, while agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability negatively relate to migration intentions. We show that openness positively and extraversion negatively relate to the willingness to move to culturally distant countries even when we control for geographic distance and economic differences between countries. Using language as a cultural distance indicator provides evidence that extravert individuals are less likely to prefer linguistically distant countries while agreeable individuals are more inclined to consider such countries as alternative destinations.

Wie bewerten Studierende als potenzielle Zielgruppe der beruflichen Bildung das Image des deutschen Berufsbildungssystems? Wie attraktiv sind betriebliche Aus- und Weiterbildungsangebote für die individuellen Bildungsbiografien der Studierenden? Diesen und weiteren Fragen wurde im Rahmen einer repräsentativen Studie, die 2015 vom Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB) in Kooperation mit der Maastricht University durchgeführt wurde, empirisch nachgegangen. Das Diskussionspapier bündelt die Ergebnisse dieser Studie und fokussiert dabei auf Image und Attraktivität betrieblicher Bildungsangebote sowie weitere Aspekte wie Informationsverhalten, Studienzufriedenheit und Einfluss von Eltern und Peers auf das postschulische Bildungswahlverhalten. (Autorenreferat, BIBB-Doku) How do students, a potential target group, view the image of the vocational education sys-tem in Germany? What is the attractiveness of company-based vocational (continuing) train-ing with respect to the educational biographies of the students? Such questions have been empirically answered within the scope of a representative study that has been conducted in 2015 as a cooperation between the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and Maastricht University. This discussion paper summarizes the results of the study and focuses on the image and the attractiveness of vocational training the information seeking behavior, the satisfaction with the course of studies and the impact of parents and peers on educational decision after high-school. (Authors' abstract, BIBB-Doku)

Contains fulltext : 228251pub.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) The aim of the present research is to investigate creativity differences, and the magnitude and nature of those differences, among university students. More specifically, we examined differ-ences in creativity within and between: (a) General Thematic Areas (Art and Science); (b) Specific Science domains (STEM), and; (c) Engineering micro-domains, for a total of 2277 students in German tertiary institutions. The results showed many statistically significant, but uniformly small, differences at all levels, across a range of Person, Process and Product variables. The pattern of results suggests that Openness, Creative Self-Efficacy and Divergent Thinking may be general pre-requisites for creativity. In contrast, the way that characteristics of creative products (e.g. originality) are perceived appears more complex. This research sheds additional light on long-standing debates regarding domain-generality/specificity and creativity. 13 augustus 2020 13 p.