Personality, achievement emotions, and school-related wellbeing in primary and lower-secondary school

School-related wellbeing refers to the overall balance between students’ negative and positive aspects. Achievement emotions are those emotions related to school activities and outcomes. The two constructs are closely intertwined, but the nature of their relationship and the possible role of personality as their antecedent is yet unexplored. Therefore, we investigated the relationships between personality, achievement emotions, and school-related wellbeing through a quantitative cross-sectional approach. Given the lack of research using other-report approaches, we involved 384 mothers of fourth and seventh-graders who assessed their offspring’s personality, achievement emotions, and school-related wellbeing. We preliminarily checked the fit of two alternative models: the first with personality considered as an antecedent of achievement emotions which were, in turn, antecedents of school-related wellbeing; the second inverting the positions of emotions and wellbeing. The first model had the better fit. Therefore, we ran a path analysis deleting non-significant paths, which confirmed that personality was linked to achievement emotions, in turn, connected with school-related wellbeing. We also identified class level and sex differences in personality, achievement emotions, and school-related wellbeing. The present study extends the knowledge of how students’ personality traits act as risk or protective factors for school-related emotions and wellbeing, urging teachers to focus on students with at-risk characteristics.