Choice of Studies at University, Personality and Socio-Economic Status: Comparison Between French Students in a Public Social Sciences and Humanities Faculty and Brazilian Law Students in a Private Faculty

Several studies have examined the links between personality and choice of studies, particularly from a longitudinal point of view. This original research proposes to study these aspects a posteriori. The Rotter questionnaire (1966) was completed by two groups of students in psychology (N=65) and law (N= 91). The other particularity of the samples concerns the location and the differences in socio-economic backgrounds: privileged for law students in Brazil, modest for students in psychology in France. Most of the hypotheses put forward, particularly those related to the citizenship and political aspects, are verified on the basis of the binomial test.