Associations Between Academic Burnout And Social-Cognitive Factors: Does General Cognitive Ability Matter?

Abstract

Self-regulated learning theories emphasise the interaction of cognitive, motivational, behavioural, social and emotional factors. The current study examined how general cognitive ability moderates the association between academic burnout and social-cognitive factors, such as academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. The sample of 289 Estonian 8th-grade students completed the questionnaires assessing academic burnout, academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies; 12 tasks on Raven’s matrices’ D-set were administered to measure students’ general cognitive ability. While maladaptive emotion regulation strategies explained more of the variance in academic burnout than adaptive strategies, none of these had a significant interaction effect with general cognitive ability. On the contrary, a unique pattern emerged regarding general cognitive ability as a moderator of the association between adaptive social-cognitive factors and academic burnout. More specifically, students with higher general cognitive ability, but lower academic buoyancy and/or who use less frequently adaptive strategies for emotion regulation, such as positive refocusing, positive reappraisal and putting into perspective, are more prone to academic burnout than the other student groups. Therefore, the study indicates that higher cognitive abilities can either be a blessing or a curse, depending on whether the student tends to apply or not to apply adaptive coping strategies. The findings support the idea of explicitly teaching proactive practices to prevent academic burnout in schools. Beyond that, the results support a deeper investigation of the role that cognitive abilities play in the relationship between academic burnout and social-cognitive factors (including behavioural emotion regulation strategies).