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. 2025 Aug 1:16:1650271.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1650271. eCollection 2025.

Exploring the predictors of academic performance: the role of personality, rational beliefs, and self-efficacy

Lucica Emilia Coşa  1 , Vasile Cernat  1
Affiliations

Exploring the predictors of academic performance: the role of personality, rational beliefs, and self-efficacy

Lucica Emilia Coşa et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Introduction: This study examines the predictive roles of personality traits, rational/irrational beliefs, and self-efficacy in academic performance, while also investigating how these factors interact with gender, residence, and school type.

Methods: Data were collected from 453 students at George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology in Târgu Mureş using the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ), the General Self-Efficacy Scale (SES), and the short-form Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (ABSs).

Results: Results revealed that institutional factors, particularly high school type, emerged as the strongest predictors of academic performance. Among the psychological traits, aggressiveness/hostility, impulsive sensation seeking, and rationality significantly predicted academic performance. Notably, impulsive sensation seeking was positively linked to higher performance in female but not male students, while aggressiveness/hostility predicted better performance only among students with high self-efficacy.

Discussion: These findings highlight the potential for tailored intervention programs that take into account gender and personality differences to improve academic outcomes.

Keywords: academic performance; aggressiveness; impulsive sensation-seeking; rational beliefs; self-efficacy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Line graphs comparing academic performance against irrationality for males and females. Males show increasing performance across low, medium, and high neuroticism levels. Females show decreasing performance for low neuroticism and increasing for high neuroticism as irrationality increases.
FIGURE 1
Three-way interaction effect of neuroticism (low, medium, high), irrational beliefs (x-axis), and gender (left: male; right: female) on academic performance (y-axis).
Line graphs displaying the relationship between rationality and academic performance for males and females, with lines for low, medium, and high impulsive sensation seeking levels. Both genders show a positive correlation, with high sensation seekers performing best as rationality increases.
FIGURE 2
Three-way interaction effect of impulsive sensation seeking (low, medium, high), rational beliefs (x-axis), and gender (left panel: male; right panel: female) on academic performance (y-axis).
Line graph showing the relationship between aggression and academic performance across self-efficacy levels. High self-efficacy is a solid line increasing slightly. Medium is a dashed line decreasing, while low is a dotted line decreasing steeply.
FIGURE 3
Two-way interaction between aggressivity (x-axis) and self-efficacy (low, medium, and high) on academic performance (y-axis).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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