Students’ personality impacts sense of belonging of students in different ways

Abstract The sense of belonging satisfies the need for relatedness which is one of the three basic psychological needs. It is considered to be a foundation for success in higher education. One of the predictors of sense of belonging from a psychological perspective is students’ personality in the sense of Big Five traits. There are three modes in which those traits can influence the sense of belonging. Firstly, influence of the individual student’s personality, secondly, influence of the classmates’ personality, and thirdly, influence of the fit between individual student’s and classmates’ personality. We test all three effects at the same time using data from N = 398 students at two time points and multilevel polynomial analyses. With relatively high explained variance, we found that (1) all five traits of the individual students were related to sense of belonging, (2) classmates’ openness and agreeableness are positively related to sense of belonging, and (3) there is an interaction effect for emotional stability but it does not indicate a congruence.