Patterns of Collaboration and Isolation: How the Big Five Personality Traits and Beliefs on Human Nature Shape Student Research Networking

This study investigates whether student collaboration functions as an intellectual meritocracy or a behavioral sorting mechanism. Utilizing a cross-national dataset of 1,754 Political Science students across six Southeast European countries, we employed multilevel mixed-effects logistic regressions to test how psychometric traits and macro-philosophical belief systems dictate student integration into vertical, horizontal, or isolated research archetypes.