Students’ competitive orientation and Big Five personality traits as predictors of cognitive test anxiety
Versavia Curelaru, Georgeta Diac
Competitive orientation is a psychological construct reflecting peoples’ tendency to see others as interdependent rivals and to maximize their own outcomes over others, in opposition to cooperative orientation that implies seeing others as interdependent partners in achieving common outcomes. In this study, competitive orientation and Big Five personality traits of a sample of 402 undergraduate students were investigated in relation to cognitive test anxiety, while controlling for the effects of gender and academic performance. The results showed that competitive orientation was positively related, while cooperative orientation is unrelated to cognitive test anxiety. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that cognitive test anxiety is positively predicted by competitive orientation, beyond the significant positive effect of neuroticism and negative effects of academic performance, conscientiousness, extraversion and openness to experience. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to previous research.
Competitive orientation, Cooperative orientation, Cognitive test anxiety, Big Five personality traits, Academic achievement
Versavia Curelaru – Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Romania, E-mail: versavia.curelaru@uaic.ro
Georgeta Diac – Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Romania
