Achievement emotions in adolescence: Relations with Big Five personality traits in males and females

Introduction According to the Control-Value Theory (CVT; Pekrun et al., 2023), students experience different achievement emotions in relation to school activities or outcomes. Such emotions are influenced by many antecedents at proximal (control and value appraisals) and distal levels (personality and sex). The relation between personality and achievement emotions has been studied only rarely (Hoferichter et al., 2014; Pekrun et al., 2023; Thomas & Cassady, 2019), particularly with adolescents (Sorić et al., 2013). Aims This study has two aims: (1) investigating whether the Big Five personality traits (BF) are related to positive and negative achievement emotions, and (2) exploring whether the relations between the BF and achievement emotions are the same for males and females. Method We involved 254 6th-7th graders (Mage = 12.20, SD = 0.57, range: 10.47-13.81; 43% females) from Northern Italy. Through a self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaire, we assessed Big Five personality traits (adapting the Big Five Inventory-2; Soto & John, 2017) and school-related positive and negative achievement emotions (using the Achievement Emotions Adjective List; Raccanello et al., 2022). Results First, by running a path analysis, we found that positive achievement emotions (R2 = 0.20) were related positively to Extraversion (β = 0.25, p < .001) and Open-mindedness (β = 0.16, p = .007), and negatively to Neuroticism (β = -0.13, p = .038); and that negative achievement emotions (R2 = 0.34) were related positively to Neuroticism (β = 0.45, p < .001) and negatively to Agreeableness (β = -0.13, p = .033). Second, by conducting a multigroup comparison, we observed different patterns of relations for the two sexes. For males, there were positive relations between positive emotions and Open-mindedness, and between negative emotions and Neuroticism. For females, positive emotions were positively related to Extraversion, and negative emotions were linked positively to Neuroticism and negatively to Agreeableness. Discussion Notwithstanding limitations (reduced sample size, cross-sectional data), we documented some relations between BF and school-related emotions experienced by adolescents as postulated by the CVT, also finding sex differences. Understanding how individual differences impact achievement emotions can be the basis for interventions to improve students’ well-being.