The Struggle Behind Success: How Personality Traits and Procrastination Shape Academic Achievement

Abstract

Academic achievement is influenced by two psychological construct i.e procrastination & personality traits, but the combined impact of them didn’t get much attention in Pakistani context. The current study investigates the potential mediating role of procrastination between academic achievement and the Big Five personality traits.200 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 25 who were chosen via purposive sampling participated in a cross-sectional correlational design. The Big Five Inventory-10 (Rammstedt & John, 2007), the Irrational Procrastination (Steel, 2010), and the Academic Performance Scale (Birchmeier et al., 2011) were among the standardized tools that were used in this study. In data analysis correlation method and mediation testing using PROCESS macro-Model 4 were used. The correlational findings show that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to change had positive correlation with academic achievement and negative correlation with procrastination. While neuroticism showed negative correlation with academic performance and positive correlation with procrastination, Mediation analysis showed that procrastination partially mediated the effects of Extraversion (β = 0.13,95% CI [0.18, 0.82]), Conscientiousness (β = 0.146, 95% CI [0.155, 0.828]), openness to change (β = 0.13, 95% CI [0.17, 0.78]) on academic performance. On the other hand, the association between neuroticism and academic performance was fully mediated by procrastination (β =-0.13, 95% CI [-1.44, -0.38]). However, procrastination did not show a significant indirect effect with agreeableness (β =0.06, 95% CI [-0.14, 0.61].

The study concludes that personality traits influence academic achievement both directly and indirectly through procrastination, with the omission of agreeableness. Extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to change enhance academic achievement partially by reducing procrastination, however neuroticism lowers academic performance through procrastination. Agreeableness however does not show a significant indirect effect with procrastination. These results highlight procrastination as an important behavioral pathway linking personality trait to academic achievement and suggest that endorsing self-regulation skills may help improve student’s academic outcomes.