The determinants of scholastic achievement: The contribution of personality traits, self-esteem, and academic self-efficacy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2013.07.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Traits, self-esteem, and self-efficacy operate in concert in predicting academic performance.

  • Self-efficacy mediates the effect of conscientiousness on senior high school grades.

  • Self-efficacy mediates the effect of self-esteem on senior high school grades.

  • Such relationships did not differ as a function of gender.

  • Such relationships held controlling for parents' education and previous scholastic achievement.

Abstract

The contribution to academic achievement of personality traits, self-esteem, and self-efficacy beliefs has been examined in high school. SEM analysis showed that conscientiousness, openness, and self-esteem were positively inter-related, with both traits and self-esteem increasing students' perceived academic self-efficacy, which in turn mediated the effect of conscientiousness and self-esteem on senior high school grades. These relationships held controlling for gender, parents' education, and previous scholastic achievement.

Educators should be aware of students' personality antecedents in order to improve their students' beliefs about their capabilities to master different areas of coursework and to regulating their motivation and learning activities.

Introduction

Many scholars over the last decades tried to identify major determinants of scholastic achievement with the goal to develop adequate interventions to promote success and avoid failure in the school setting (Robbins et al., 2004). Academic difficulties may lead to long-term patterns of school drop-out, academic failure, and problems entering a successful career in adulthood (Alexander, Entwisle, & Kabbani, 2001), as well as externalizing problems (e.g., Ansary & Luthar, 2009), particularly during adolescence and high school years that have been described as a critical period with important implications for school achievement (e.g., Leeson, Ciarrochi, & Heaven, 2008). At the same time, scholastic achievement is among the most studied social consequences of mental health problems (e.g., internalizing and externalizing problems) throughout all school levels (e.g., McLeod, Uemura, & Rohrman, 2012).

Among other factors, individual differences in traits, self-esteem, and self-efficacy beliefs have proved to be important predictors of academic achievement (e.g., Bandura et al., 1996, Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003a, Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003b, Hair and Graziano, 2003, Marsh et al., 2006). However, most studies have addressed the contribution of the aforementioned constructs as independent from one another, failing to integrate findings from different research programs.

Individuals may be predisposed to develop and exercise self-regulatory skills that promote successful academic performance (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003a, Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2003b). Such predispositions are traditionally studied as personality traits. Personality traits are defined as relatively unconditional behavioral tendencies that attest to individual's potentials in broad domain of functioning (McCrae & Costa, 1999). Personality researchers have increasingly converged on the Big Five model of personality, which includes the dimensions of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (or neuroticism), and openness to experience or intellect (from here on the term openness will be used; e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1999). Among the five factors, conscientiousness and openness have shown more consistent associations with academic achievement (e.g., Poropat, 2009). Conscientiousness refers to individual characteristics such as responsibility, the ability to plan, organize and persist in the service of achievement; in addition, it has been linked to methodic and analytic learning (e.g., Komarraju, Karau, & Schmeck, 2009). Whereas openness refers to individual characteristics such as a positive attitude towards challenging learning experiences as opposed to being simple and narrow-minded (McCrae & Costa, 1999) and it has been linked to deep approach to learning and elaborative learning (e.g., Komarraju et al., 2009).

These results were consistent with both highly selected samples of university students (e.g. Noftle & Robins, 2007), as well as some studies with adolescents (e.g. Barbaranelli et al., 2003, John et al., 1994, Mervielde et al., 1995). Other major traits like extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness have shown less consistent associations with academic achievement than conscientiousness and openness (e.g., Poropat, 2009).

Self-esteem reflects the way in which individuals evaluate their self worth (Leeson et al., 2008). Some studies have pointed to the contribution of self-esteem to successful academic achievement (the positive correlation between self-esteem and academic achievement range from r = .10 to .30), whereas other studies have pointed to the contribution of academic achievement to self-esteem (e.g. Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003). It remains a matter of contention that the direction of causality likely is bidirectional.

Ultimately, a number of authors have questioned the robustness of the relations between self-esteem and academic achievement since unsuccessful academic performance does not necessarily imply feelings of personal devaluation (e.g., Baumeister et al., 2003). In addition, high self-esteem refers to a global perception of oneself, which is influenced by all the domains of performance, not only the academic one (e.g., Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). However, other scholars, who moved from the focus on global self-esteem to specific self-concepts (e.g., academic or mathematical self-concept), did find stronger relationships between specific self-concept and academic achievement than between global self-esteem and academic achievement (e.g., Marsh & Craven, 1997). Moreover, high self-esteem not necessarily is directly conducive to high academic performance (Mone, Baker, & Jeffries, 1995). In particular, Lui, Kaplan, and Risser (1992) found that low self-esteem had a significant indirect effect on unsuccessful achievement through increased deviance, psychological distress, decreased motivation, illness, and absence from school. In addition, Crocker and Luhtanen (2003) found that self-esteem did not significantly predict college students' academic achievement; however, they found a significant association between low self-esteem and students' self-reported academic problems.

Self-efficacy beliefs are judgments about how effectively a person believes (s)he can act in order to meet a goal or to cope effectively with challenging situations (Bandura, 1997). Traditionally, self-efficacy beliefs have been conceptualized as reflecting highly contextualized knowledge that affects appraisal processes, which in turn guide actions (Bandura, 1997). This view has led researchers to emphasize self-efficacy on specific tasks and to pursue a multifaceted approach to the study of the various expressions of self-efficacy across diverse situations. In the academic domain, scholars focused on students' beliefs to successfully master specific academic subjects and curricula areas (e.g., mathematics) and to self-regulate one's own studying and learning activities (Bandura et al., 1996, Pastorelli et al., 2001).

Possessing knowledge and being capable of proficient action are two different things. Although knowledge and cognitive skills are necessary for academic attainments, they are not sufficient (Bandura, 1997). Students often know what to do but cannot get themselves to put in the necessary effort to deal with difficult task demands. In managing task demands, students who have developed their self-regulatory capacities are better able to do what needs to be done more efficiently (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1988). A sense of efficacy is needed to promote such efforts. Many evidences support a positive association between students' beliefs that they can regulate their own learning (hereafter academic self-efficacy) and academic achievement (e.g., Pajares & Urdan, 2005). In particular, students' academic self-efficacy beliefs have been shown to be significant predictors of students' course selection (Britner & Pajares, 2006), academic continuance and achievement (Britner & Pajares, 2006), college performance and persistence (Gore, 2006, Robbins et al., 2004), GPA (Robbins et al., 2004), academic aspirations (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 2001), and career trajectories across domains and age levels (Bandura et al., 1996, Bandura et al., 2001, Britner and Pajares, 2006, Gore, 2006), beyond that accounted for by more traditional predictors (i.e., cognitive ability; Zuffianò et al., 2013). In addition, a study of Caprara et al. (2008) examined the developmental course of academic self-efficacy from early to late adolescence and found that high levels of academic self-efficacy measured at the age of 12 were associated with higher high-school grades and with a lower probability of dropping out of school.

In agreement with the view of personality as a complex system (Caprara & Cervone, 2000), one may consider traits, self-esteem, and self-efficacy beliefs as crucial determinants of academic achievement, since they address different structures and processes that contribute to academic performance, although at different levels. In addition, whereas traits and general self-esteem represent personality structures or individuals' potentialities (Hair & Graziano, 2003), self-efficacy is a knowledge structure that operates at an intermediate level for turning traits and self-esteem into specific behaviors.

While previous research attests to positive relationships between personality traits and self-esteem (e.g., Hair and Graziano, 2003, Marsh et al., 2006), between personality traits and self-efficacy beliefs (e.g., Caprara, Vecchione, Alessandri, Gerbino, & Barbaranelli, 2011), and between self-esteem and self-efficacy beliefs (e.g., D'Amico & Cardaci, 2003), only few studies addressed their joint contribution to academic performance. Some scholars addressed the contribution of personality traits through self-efficacy beliefs (e.g., Caprara et al., 2011, Chen et al., 2001), or of traits through self-esteem (e.g., Hair & Graziano, 2003), or of self-esteem through self-efficacy beliefs (e.g., Lane, Lane, & Kyprianou, 2004) to academic performance. Specifically, there are inconsistent results about the association between self-esteem and self-efficacy. In particular, whereas self-esteem concerns with judgments of self-worth, perceived self-efficacy concerns with judgments of personal capabilities (e.g., one may judge himself/herself inefficacious in a certain activity without investing his/her self-worth in that activity, thus, not suffering any loss of self-esteem for being as inefficacious; Bandura, 1997). Considering the school context, some students may like themselves if their performance is successful and such positive self-esteem may induce them to perceive their academic capabilities as more positive (D'Amico & Cardaci, 2003). However, unsuccessful academic performance may not necessarily imply feelings of personal devaluation if students derive their esteem from sources other than academic performance (Chen et al., 2001). In addition, Pintrich (2000) examined the interrelationships of personality traits, self-regulated learning (which can be considered as a proxy of academic self-efficacy), and academic achievement. He found that self-regulated learning partly mediates the relationship between personality traits and academic achievement, implying that self-regulated learning has personality underpinnings.

We are not aware of any studies that simultaneously have assessed the contribution of personality traits, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and academic adjustment. Pursuing this goal may lead to a better understanding of scholastic achievement's best determinants, especially in late adolescence which has been described as a critical period with important implications for school achievement (e.g., Leeson et al., 2008).

Section snippets

The present study

The current research focuses on the contribution to academic performance of conscientiousness and openness (as the most important predictors of academic achievement among the Big Five), self-esteem, and academic self-efficacy beliefs. To this aim, first, we expected to find positive correlations between traits, self-esteem, self-efficacy beliefs, and academic achievement; second, we expected to corroborate a conceptual model assigning a crucial role to self-efficacy beliefs in mediating the

Participants and procedure

The participants were 426 children, 206 boys and 220 girls, part of an ongoing longitudinal project that started in 1987 with the primary goal of investigating the personal and social determinants of children and adolescents' adjustment. This longitudinal project includes a staggered, multiple cohort design, with different cohorts assessed at different time points. Participants were originally drawn from two public junior high schools in Genzano, a residential community located about 30 km far

Descriptive statistics

Means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations of parents' education, junior high-school grades at age 14, conscientiousness, openness, self-esteem, academic self-efficacy at age 16, and senior high-school grades at age 19 are reported in Table 1, separately for males and females. Females reported higher scores than males in almost all the examined variables. For both males and females, self-ratings of conscientiousness, openness, self-esteem, and academic self-efficacy beliefs were

Discussion

The present study examined the relationships between personality traits, self-esteem, and academic self-efficacy beliefs (i.e., students' beliefs in their capability to master different areas of coursework and to regulate their motivation and learning activities; Pastorelli et al., 2001) to academic performance. In particular, we considered the two personality traits that have been proved to be the most important predictors, among the Big Five Factors, of academic achievement: conscientiousness

Conclusions

The main contribution of the present study is that both personality traits and self-esteem influenced students' perceived academic self-efficacy beliefs, which in turn influenced senior high school grades. Educators should be aware of their students' personality antecedents in order to better attune their efforts to improve their students' beliefs about how much they are capable to successfully pursue challenging academic and personal goals (Bidjerano & Dai, 2007).

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Italian Ministry University and Research (COFIN: 1998, 2000, 2002), the Sapienza University of Rome (1998, 2000, 2001, 2002) and by the Italian Institute of Health to Gian Vittorio Caprara and collaborators.

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