Beyond metacognition: The dominant role of the general factor of personality in learning adaptation

The notions of metacognition and ego-resilienc seem to commonly represent an ability to adaptively adjust self-control to fit the requirements of environments. The latter presents a general mechanism of adaptive adjustment while the former presents a specific example of learning activity. As ego-resiliency was almost fully indicated by the General Factor of Personality (GFP) as the literature suggested, the present study tested the relationship between the GFP and metacognition and then compared their influences on learning adaptation. As found, the GFP highly overlapped with overall metacognition (r = 0.69). Within the three dimensions of metacognition, metacognitive skills correlated with the GFP much higher than metacognitive knowledge and experience, suggesting that the GFP is more linked with the application of metacognition in learning. By comparison, the GFP displayed much higher correlations with metacognitive skills and experience as well as learning adaptation than any Big Five traits, showing its incremental power in correlation with those variables. More importantly, in the mediation model, the GFP was found to be the root reason for the outcomes of learning adaptation and accounted for most of the impact of metacognition on learning adaptation. With these findings, the limitations of the present study and suggestions for future studies were discussed.