Influence of personality and emotional competences on academic performance: direct and indirect pathways mediated by perceived stress.

Background: Among the factors influencing academic performance (AP), individual differences at the trait level such as personality and emotional competences (EC) have been found to play a critical role, similarly to state variables such as perceived stress (PS).

Participants and procedure: The aim of this study was to clarify whether the influence of personality (Big Five) and EC on AP (general point average) is direct and/or mediated via PS. 537 undergraduate students from a French university (112 male and 425 female, M_age = 19.84 years, SD_age = 1.74 years, range = 18-30 years; first year: n = 293, 55%; second year: n = 162, 30%, third year: n = 82, 15%) filled out the test battery around three weeks before the final examination.

Results: Path analysis showed that AP was directly predicted by conscientiousness (+), neuroticism (+), extraversion (-) and perceived stress (-), while perceived stress was predicted by neuroticism (+) and by intrapersonal EC (-).

Conclusions: The results illustrate the robust influence of conscientiousness on AP, while EC was not found to influence AP directly, but indirectly via its effect on PS.