Learned Resourcefulness Moderates the Relationship Between Academic Stress and Academic Performance

@article{akgun2003learned,
  author = {AKGUN, SERAP and CIARROCHI, JOSEPH},
  title = {Learned Resourcefulness Moderates the Relationship Between Academic Stress and Academic Performance},
  year = {2003},
  journal = {Educational Psychology},
  volume = {23},
  number = {3},
  pages = {287-294},
  publisher = {Informa UK Limited},
  doi = {10.1080/0144341032000060129}
}

In plain language

University life is stressful: exams, deadlines, competition and heavy workloads all pile up, and stress is known to drag down students’ grades. But does it drag everyone down equally? This study asked whether “learned resourcefulness” — a learnable set of self-control skills for managing negative emotions and staying on task under pressure — protects students from the academic damage that stress can cause.

The researchers had 141 first-year undergraduate students complete measures of academic stress and learned resourcefulness, and then obtained the students’ actual grade point averages from university records rather than relying on self-report.

Overall, higher academic stress went with lower grades. But resourcefulness changed the picture dramatically: high stress harmed the grades of students low in learned resourcefulness, while it had no measurable effect on the grades of highly resourceful students. Because learned resourcefulness is a set of skills that can be taught, the findings point to a practical way of helping stress-vulnerable students — training them in the self-management skills that seem to buffer stress’s impact on performance.

Key findings

• Academic stress was negatively related to academic performance: more stressed students tended to have lower grade point averages.
• Learned resourcefulness significantly moderated the stress–performance relationship (interaction significant at p < .05).
• High academic stress adversely affected the grades of students low in learned resourcefulness.
• High academic stress had no significant effect on the grades of students high in learned resourcefulness — resourcefulness acted as a protective buffer.
• Female students obtained higher grade point averages than male students in this sample.
• Performance was measured objectively, using GPAs obtained from university records rather than students’ self-reports.

Related work

• All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
• Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis

Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.