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 8^th-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).

Keywords: Academic burnoutcognitive abilitiesmoderation

Introduction

Academic burnout is shown to be a serious problem among adolescents (for a review see Walburg, 2014) that should be explicitly addressed. Previous research has suggested that academic buoyancy, as well as cognitive emotion regulation strategies, may play an important role in preventing and/or mitigating academic burnout and proven that adolescents with better coping abilities have reported fewer burnout symptoms than their peers with worse ones (Vinter, (under review); Vinter, Aus, & Arro, under review, 2019). Self-regulated learning theories expand the use of more domain-specific concepts of students’ learning and well-being, like cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, behavioural, social and emotional components, by integrating these into the same conceptual framework (Panadero, 2017). Therefore, the constructs belonging rather to one or the other self-regulation domain, are still considered to interact strongly as it has been already shown in previous studies (Stevens, Holmberg, Lovejoy, & Pittman, 2014). Therefore, we may ask if already known associations between well-being constructs, such as academic burnout, and social-cognitive factors, such as academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies, can have different significance in student groups with different cognitive abilities. In order to pay more specific attention to student groups that may need different support for preventing or mitigating academic burnout, more research is needed in this domain.

Problem Statement

Although the literature on self-regulated learning theories suggests cognitive, motivational, social and emotional factors to interact, there are still mixed results in this topic. For example, some studies have shown that cognitive factors predict burnout directly (May et al., 2015), but other studies have not found direct, but indirect association, predicting academic burnout through interaction between math skills and academic buoyancy (Vinter et al., 2019). However, there is a lack of research concentrating on moderated studies in this field and especially associations between academic burnout and social-cognitive factors among middle school students with different levels of cognitive abilities have not been widely explored.

It could be suggested that general cognitive ability might be a moderator between academic burnout and social-cognitive factors and therefore, explain the level of academic burnout among student groups with different general cognitive ability. As a further idea, in case these relationships will become more clear, it might be suggested that to achieve emotional well-being in academic settings, students with different general cognitive ability should be slightly differently addressed.

Research Questions

Resulting from discussion mentioned above, the following research question was raised:

How is academic burnout associated with academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in student groups with different general cognitive ability?

Purpose of the Study

The aim of the study is to examine whether and how general cognitive ability would moderate the associations between academic burnout and social-cognitive factors, such as academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. In other words, whether these associations are different in student groups with different cognitive ability. To our best knowledge, no previous studies have yet examined general cognitive ability as a moderator in the relationship between social-cognitive factors and academic burnout among middle school students.

Research Methods

Findings

Descriptive analyses and relationships between measures

Descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, minimum and maximum values, correlation matrices and internal consistencies of all measured constructs are presented in Table 1 .

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The bivariate correlation coefficients between all measures were moderate, and therefore, referring to the distinctiveness of the measures used in the study. Also, the internal consistencies were good for every measure (Cronbach α values ranging between 0.74 and 0.91).

To answer the research question, at first, ten separate hierarchical regression analyses of each of the ten social-cognitive factors on academic burnout were performed, including general cognitive ability as a potential moderator. The results of the moderation analyses are presented in Table 2 .

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The strongest interaction effect between social-cognitive factors and general cognitive ability on academic burnout was found between general cognitive ability and academic buoyancy (see Table 2 ). Regarding cognitive emotion regulation strategies, the change in explained variance of the model and the interaction effect itself were significant only for adaptive strategies of emotion regulation such as positive refocusing, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal, and putting into perspective. Although concerning an adaptive strategy of refocus on planning, the interaction effect and the change in explained variance of the model were significant, the model itself was not statistically significant. For this reason, this strategy was excluded from further analyses. It is noteworthy that despite the models with maladaptive strategies (especially self-blame, rumination, and catastrophising) accounted for more of the variance in academic burnout than the adaptive strategies, the interaction effects with general cognitive ability were statistically significant only for the ‘adaptive strategy’-models (see Table 2 ).

Summarising, the negative association between academic burnout and academic buoyancy as well as adaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., positive refocusing, positive reappraisal and putting into perspective) tends to get stronger as a person’s general cognitive ability increases. In other words, the present findings provide evidence of a moderation effect of general cognitive ability on the relationship between social-cognitive factors and academic burnout. For further exploring the extent and nature of how social-cognitive factors and academic burnout are related in groups with different general cognitive ability, separate analyses on the factors showing significant interactions with general cognitive ability were performed (see Table 2 ). The conditional effects of the social-cognitive factors at levels of general cognitive ability as a moderator are shown in Table 3 .

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The association between academic burnout and academic buoyancy was negative and significant among all students regardless having high, average or low general cognitive ability (see Table 3 and Figure 1 ) indicating that academic buoyancy plays an important role in predicting burnout in all student groups despite different levels of general cognitive ability. However, the strongest effect between academic burnout and academic buoyancy was found among students with higher general cognitive ability.

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Regarding the association between academic burnout and positive reappraisal, it was negative and significant among students who had either high or average general cognitive ability (see Table 3 and Figure 2 ). Regarding adaptive strategies of positive refocusing and putting into perspective, analogous interaction effect for predicting academic burnout was found with an exception that the association between academic burnout and these strategies was significant only among students with high general cognitive ability (see Table 3 , Figure 3 and Figure 4 ).

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In sum, the results revealed that only associations between adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and academic burnout were moderated by general cognitive ability. The strongest effects between academic burnout and academic buoyancy, positive reappraisal, positive refocusing and putting into perspective, were found among students with higher general cognitive ability. More specifically, students who have higher general cognitive ability, but low academic buoyancy and/or who use less frequently above-mentioned adaptive strategies for emotion regulation, are more prone to academic burnout (see Figures 1 −4). On the other hand, the lowest levels of academic burnout were also found among students with high general cognitive ability who, at the same time, exhibit a high level of academic buoyancy and/or use more frequently adaptive strategies like positive reappraisal, positive refocusing and putting into perspective (see Figures 1 −4).

Conclusion

As there is not very clear understanding of how cognitive, motivational, social and emotional factors and psychological well-being interact, this study aimed to examine whether and how general cognitive ability would moderate the associations between academic burnout and social-cognitive factors, such as academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. In other words, whether these associations are different in student groups with different general cognitive ability.

At first, the results provided evidence that the most relevant and strongest factor in predicting academic burnout among all the student groups is academic buoyancy. This indicates that all students who have more problems with recovering from everyday school problems are more prone to academic burnout, despite the level of general cognitive ability. Previous research has also shown buoyancy acting as a protective factor against burnout (Anyan & Hjemdal, 2016; Garcia-Izquierdo et al., 2018; Vinter et al., 2019; Ying et al., 2016). However, the strongest was the effect among the students with higher general cognitive ability: they are less prone to burnout if they have higher level of academic buoyancy and more prone when having lower level of buoyancy. In this context, this finding replicates the study where the analogous pattern was found especially for the students with high math skills (Vinter et al., 2019).

Although none of the maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies had any significant interaction effects with general cognitive ability on predicting academic burnout, it is important to note that maladaptive strategies accounted for more variance of academic burnout than adaptive strategies. This finding is in line with previous studies which have also shown associations between low academic well-being and using maladaptive patterns of functioning in school ( Korhonen, Linnanmaki, & Aunio, 2014) and students who report more psychopathological symptoms, such as depressive symptoms and higher level of anxiety, report also using more frequently maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (Garnefski et al., 2001, 2002; Legerstee, Garnefski, Verhulst, & Utens, 2011).

On the contrary, concerning adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies, namely positive reappraisal, positive refocusing and putting into perspective, a significant interaction effect emerged between general cognitive ability and these adaptive strategies for predicting academic burnout. More specifically, the students with higher general cognitive ability and a reduced tendency towards using adaptive emotion regulation strategies are more likely to suffer from academic burnout than the group with higher general cognitive ability who use more frequently adaptive strategies. Moreover, this student group is more prone to burnout than all the groups with lower general cognitive ability. From this viewpoint, academic buoyancy and adaptive emotion regulation strategies have an analogous interaction effect on students with higher general cognitive ability. Previous studies have also reported that successful students can be more prone to academic burnout while reporting more depressive symptoms and higher level of stress, and/or higher performance orientation (Salmela-Aro et al., 2018; Tuominen-Soini & Salmela-Aro, 2014; Tuominen-Soini, Salmela-Aro, & Niemivirta, 2008) or lower academic buoyancy (Vinter et al., 2019). This pattern refers to the possible problem quite many Estonian middle school students may have: although they have shown excellent results in PISA studies (OECD, 2016), they may be more prone to academic burnout under pressure to achieve academically, especially when they have low social-emotional skills.

The results point to the need for teaching academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in schools to help to prevent and/or mitigate academic burnout among students. In addition to paying more attention to academic buoyancy and using maladaptive strategies, also teaching adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies is important, especially for students with higher general cognitive ability, as the results of the study show, especially this group of students can benefit more from this.

Intervention programs, targeted to improve students’ coping skills, have proven to be successful, but they also have been characterised by inevitable context-specificity and short-term effects (Dray et al., 2017; Yeager & Walton, 2011). Therefore, it may be important to combine and integrate the elements of supporting students’ coping skills into a larger curriculum framework (Garcia-Izquierdo et al., 2018; Ríos-Risquez et al., 2018) and paying explicitly more attention to teaching these across all subjects. However, as the results indicated that adaptive social-cognitive factors were associated with academic burnout especially among students with higher levels of general cognitive ability, but not among students with lower levels (except for academic buoyancy), it can be contemplated that using cognitively more advanced strategies is more common for students with higher cognitive abilities. It has been proposed before that students with lower levels of cognitive abilities may benefit more from behavioural strategies (Stevens et al., 2014). Therefore, not only cognitive emotion regulation strategies should be taken into account while teaching emotion regulation strategies, but emotion regulation topics might cover teaching cognitive as well as behavioural emotion regulation strategies.

The current study is not without limitations. First, the cross-sectional data have limited potential for making conclusions about causality and longitudinal studies are more useful in examining the causality of the measures. Second, mainly self-reported questionnaires were used (except for general cognitive ability) which are subject to different biases, such as response bias. Also, because of the small sample size, the results are not directly generalisable to different contexts, and more studies with larger sample sizes and in different educational contexts should be conducted to confirm or reject the patterns found in this study. The results also further support a deeper investigation of the role that cognitive abilities play in the relationship between social-cognitive factors (including behavioural emotion regulation strategies) and academic burnout.

In conclusion, the current study provides insights into how cognitive factors, such as general cognitive ability, and social-cognitive factors, such as academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies and psychological well-being (burnout) interact. The results of the study show that the associations between academic burnout and academic buoyancy and cognitive emotion regulation strategies can have a different impact on student groups with different cognitive abilities. 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. Teaching explicitly cognitive emotion regulation strategies may help to reduce students’ level of academic burnout. In addition, behavioural emotion regulation strategies should be investigated further and might also be integrated into the curriculum framework as students with lower levels of general cognitive ability may benefit more from them. Therefore, special attention needs to be paid to educational measures helping all students to acquire constructive and effective ways to reflect on and react to negative school-related events and situations.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. Writing of the article was supported by the project „TU TEE - Tallinn University as a promoter of intelligent lifestyle“ (no 2014-2020.4.01.16-0033) under activity A5 in the Tallinn University Centre of Excellence in Educational Innovation. The author would like to thank Professor Eve Kikas (Tallinn University) and her research team, especially Kati Aus and Grete Arro, as well as the students who participated. The author is also very grateful to Paul Seitlinger for revising the manuscript.

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