BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1571717
The mediating role of psychological flexibility on the relationship between academic emotions, academic engagement, and academic achievement among university students
Provisionally accepted
- University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Previous literature has proven the positive relationship of academic emotions, academic engagement and academic achievement. However, less is known about the impact of what students do in response to this emotions - that is, their psychological flexibility- on academic engagement and achievement. Therefore, the main purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of psychological flexibility in the relationship between academic emotions, engagement and achievement in a sample of university students. With this purpose, 261 psychology students, aged 18 to 26, participated in a cross-sectional survey study. The results of the study revealed a significant mediator role of psychological flexibility between the academic emotions of enjoyment and study academic achievement. Specifically, enjoyment was related to academic achievement both directly and indirectly through psychological flexibility. In contrast, study boredom did not have a direct relationship with academic achievement, but an indirect relationship mediated both by psychological flexibility and by the influence of psychological flexibility on engagement. These findings highlight the importance of psychological flexibility in the academic environment, showing its potential to help students to improve their academic performance regardless of the valence of the emotion experienced during their studies.
Keywords: Psychological flexibility, Academic engagement, academic emotions, Academic Achievement, Mediation analysis
Received: 05 Feb 2025; Accepted: 26 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 López-Crespo, Mursalzade, Sánchez-Pérez and Valdivia-Salas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sonsoles Valdivia-Salas, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.