Neuroticism and Academic Performance: Personality, Stress, and Achievement
Updated: Oct 8
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 30, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Neuroticism is often assumed to be bad for academic performance because people higher on the trait tend, on average, to experience more worry, distress, threat sensitivity, and negative emotion. That intuition captures one plausible pathway, but it overstates what the evidence can support. In modern personality science, neuroticism is a dimensional Big Five trait, not a diagnosis, and academic performance is a family of outcomes that includes grade point average, course grades, examinations, standardized tests, persistence, and other indicators. The relationship between the two depends on what is measured, how it is measured, who is being studied, and which other variables are considered.
The broadest evidence suggests a surprisingly restrained conclusion: neuroticism has, at most, a small average association with academic performance, and the association is far less consistent than the one observed for conscientiousness. A quantitative synthesis of more than 50 meta-analyses estimated the neuroticism–academic performance association at about ρ = −.03, close to zero, while conscientiousness showed a substantially larger academic association. See Zell and Lesick’s quantitative synthesis.
That near-zero average does not mean neuroticism is irrelevant to student life. Neuroticism is strongly connected with perceived psychological stress, and stress, test anxiety, rumination, sleep disruption, self-efficacy, and self-regulation can all matter for learning and performance. It means that the broad trait does not translate into a simple rule such as “higher neuroticism means lower grades.” Several processes can operate at the same time, some impairing performance and some increasing vigilance, preparation, or compensatory effort.
For the broader construct itself, see Neuroticism: What It Is in the Big Five Personality Model. The present article stays with one narrower question: what personality research actually shows about neuroticism and academic achievement.
Short Answer: Does Neuroticism Affect Academic Performance?
At the population level, higher neuroticism is sometimes associated with slightly poorer academic performance, but the average relationship is small, heterogeneous, and often statistically weak. In some student groups the association is effectively zero. In some analyses it becomes nonsignificant after the other Big Five traits are modeled jointly. In some narrower contexts, particularly among younger university students, small positive associations have also appeared.
A 2025 meta-analysis of 84 studies and 46,729 university students found conscientiousness to be the clearest Big Five correlate of academic performance. Neuroticism showed little negative association overall, but the authors reported a small positive association among freshmen and sophomores, r = .042. See Chen, Cheung, and Zeng (2025).
A 2026 one-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling reanalysis of essentially the same evidence base examined the Big Five simultaneously rather than relying only on zero-order correlations. In that model, neuroticism had no significant unique association with academic performance, β = −.006, p = .771, whereas conscientiousness remained the strongest predictor. See Gul-E-Zahra and colleagues (2026).
Those findings are compatible rather than mutually exclusive. A zero-order correlation asks whether two variables move together on average. A multivariate model asks whether neuroticism predicts academic performance after shared variance with other personality traits is accounted for. Moderator analyses ask whether the relationship changes across subgroups or contexts. Different statistical questions can produce different estimates without any of them proving that neuroticism directly causes grades to rise or fall.
What Major Meta-Analyses Show
The older evidence already pointed to a small and context-sensitive relationship
Poropat’s 2009 meta-analysis synthesized Five-Factor Model research with cumulative sample sizes reaching more than 70,000. Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness showed significant associations with academic performance, and academic level and age moderated several trait–performance relationships. Neuroticism did not emerge as a comparably robust general predictor. See Poropat (2009).
Vedel’s 2014 systematic review and meta-analysis focused on tertiary GPA and restricted inclusion to five commonly used Big Five measures: the NEO PI-R, NEO-FFI, Big Five Inventory, Big Five Markers, and Big Five IPIP. Across 20 studies and 17,717 participants, conscientiousness was the strongest predictor of GPA, with a weighted association of r = .26. Neuroticism was not one of the traits showing a similarly robust relationship. See Vedel (2014).
A much larger 2022 meta-analysis by Mammadov synthesized 267 independent samples from 228 studies, totaling 413,074 participants. Cognitive ability and Big Five personality jointly explained meaningful variance in academic performance, but cognitive ability and conscientiousness carried most of the predictive weight. See Mammadov (2022).
The newest university meta-analysis does not turn neuroticism into a strong GPA predictor
The 2025 university-specific meta-analysis is important because it expanded the evidence base to 84 studies across 26 countries or regions and tested moderators such as measurement approach, cultural context, academic major, year of study, and gender composition. Its central result was not that neuroticism suddenly became a strong academic advantage or disadvantage. The central result was heterogeneity: the Big Five–achievement relationship changes across contexts, with conscientiousness remaining the most robust general predictor.
The small positive association reported for freshmen and sophomores is therefore best interpreted as a subgroup estimate, not as proof that worry improves grades. It could reflect differences in adaptation, vigilance, study behavior, assessment conditions, sample composition, or other variables that were not experimentally manipulated. A moderator tells us that an association differs across groups; it does not identify the causal mechanism that produced the difference.
Modeling the Big Five together changes the question
The 2026 MASEM reanalysis is especially useful for avoiding a common interpretive error. Big Five traits are conceptually distinct but empirically correlated. If neuroticism is examined alone, its observed association with achievement can partly reflect variance shared with conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, or agreeableness. Modeling all five traits together estimates the association uniquely attributable to each trait within that model.
In the reanalysis, neuroticism’s unique coefficient was essentially zero. This does not prove that neuroticism has no academic consequences. It means that, across this large university evidence base, the broad neuroticism domain did not contribute a reliable independent linear prediction once covariance among the Big Five was modeled. The distinction matters for both science and student self-interpretation.
Why the Average Relationship Can Be Small Even When Neuroticism Matters
A small average association can emerge when different pathways point in different directions. Neuroticism may increase exposure to distressing thoughts or amplify perceived difficulty, which can interfere with concentration and working memory during demanding tasks. At the same time, concern about possible failure can sometimes prompt earlier preparation, checking, rehearsal, or greater effort. If these pathways vary across people and contexts, their effects can partly cancel at the broad trait level.
This is one reason a near-zero correlation should not be read as “nothing is happening.” It may represent genuine absence of an important relationship, offsetting mechanisms, measurement limitations, or a mix of subgroups with different patterns. The available evidence supports heterogeneity far more strongly than it supports a universal compensatory-benefit theory.
Stress Is One of the Clearest Connecting Pathways
Neuroticism has a robust population-level relationship with perceived psychological stress. A meta-analysis drawing 1,575 effect sizes from 298 samples found that neuroticism was positively related to stress, with the clearest relationship for psychological stress perception. The Big Five showed much weaker or null associations with physiological stress responses. See Luo, Zhang, Cao, and Roberts (2023).
For students, this distinction is crucial. Two people can face the same examination schedule, workload, or deadline and experience the demands differently. A person higher in neuroticism may be more likely to appraise uncertain or evaluative situations as threatening, dwell on possible errors, or remain emotionally activated after a setback. Those processes can increase subjective academic stress even when the external academic load is similar.
The relationship is probabilistic. A neuroticism score does not tell us how much stress a particular student will experience, how they will cope, or what their grades will be. Stress itself is shaped by workload, finances, sleep, social support, health, institutional climate, prior preparation, discrimination, caregiving demands, and many other factors.
The broader evidence on this pathway is covered in Neuroticism and Stress: Perceived Stress, Reactivity, and Recovery.
Test Anxiety Is Related to Neuroticism but Is Not the Same Construct
Test anxiety is a situation-specific pattern of anxiety associated with evaluative situations such as examinations. Neuroticism is a broad personality trait spanning many contexts and long time periods. A student can score relatively high in neuroticism without experiencing severe test anxiety, and a student can experience substantial test anxiety without being unusually high in global neuroticism.
A 30-year meta-analytic review covering 238 studies found that test anxiety was negatively related to educational performance across standardized tests, university entrance examinations, and GPA, with effects generally in the small-to-moderate range. The relationship also varied with test difficulty, stakes, age, and other factors. See von der Embse and colleagues (2018).
This creates an important interpretive boundary. Evidence that test anxiety predicts poorer performance cannot simply be relabeled as evidence that neuroticism predicts poorer performance. The constructs overlap, but they are measured differently and operate at different levels of specificity. A broad trait can create vulnerability to more frequent anxiety responses while leaving substantial room for context, learning history, coping, and situational demands.
Academic Performance Is Not One Thing
Studies use the phrase academic performance for several outcomes that should not be treated as interchangeable. GPA aggregates performance across courses and often across months or years. A single examination captures performance under a specific set of time, content, and evaluative conditions. Standardized tests are designed differently again. Course grades can include attendance, participation, projects, laboratory work, essays, and instructor judgments. Self-reported grades add another layer because the outcome itself may contain reporting error.
A trait can therefore show different relationships with different academic criteria. Neuroticism may matter more when the outcome places heavy weight on evaluative pressure, repeated deadlines, uncertainty, or oral performance than when achievement is based on a different mix of tasks. Conversely, a relationship observed with one exam cannot automatically be generalized to long-term GPA.
Richardson, Abraham, and Bond’s systematic review and meta-analysis of university GPA identified 50 conceptually distinct correlates and showed that academic performance reflects a broad network of cognitive, motivational, self-regulatory, learning, and contextual factors. Academic self-efficacy, grade goals, effort regulation, prior performance, and cognitive measures all contributed to the picture. See Richardson, Abraham, and Bond (2012).
Measurement of Neuroticism Matters
There is no universal neuroticism score that can be inserted into an academic-risk formula. Neuroticism is operationalized differently across instruments, and the label itself varies by model. The NEO PI-R and NEO-FFI use the Neuroticism domain. The BFI-2 uses Negative Emotionality as the corresponding broad Big Five domain. IPIP scales can be built from different item pools and lengths. Eysenck instruments come from a related but distinct personality tradition and should not be treated as psychometrically identical to Five-Factor Model inventories.
McAbee and Oswald’s 2013 meta-analysis directly compared five frequently used Big Five measures for predicting postsecondary GPA. Conscientiousness showed relatively robust validity across measures, while the predictive validities of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness differed by instrument and were generally low. See McAbee and Oswald (2013).
A raw score, percentile, T score, or label such as “high neuroticism” only has meaning relative to the specific instrument, scoring method, normative sample, and population. A percentile from one inventory cannot be assumed to equal a raw score from another. None of these scores is a psychiatric diagnosis, and none establishes that a student will underperform academically.
For score interpretation and instrument boundaries, see Neuroticism Test: What It Measures and How to Interpret Results.
Domain Scores Can Hide Facet-Level Differences
Broad neuroticism combines narrower tendencies. Depending on the model, these may include anxiety, depression-like affect, anger or irritability, self-consciousness, impulsiveness or immoderation, and vulnerability to stress. Facets are correlated enough to form a broader domain, but they need not have identical relationships with every outcome.
A 2025 study of 450 university students used an IPIP-based 24-item neuroticism measure, official SAT scores, and official GPA records. Domain-level neuroticism was weakly negatively correlated with GPA, and depression and immoderation facets also showed negative correlations. In structural models controlling for SAT and shared facet variance, the depression facet’s residual variance emerged as the significant negative predictor. See Minnigh and colleagues (2025).
That finding is informative but should remain at the level of evidence it actually provides. It is one university study using one IPIP-based operationalization. It does not establish a universal “depression facet causes low GPA” law, and a personality-facet score must not be confused with a clinical diagnosis of depressive disorder. The study strengthens the case for examining narrower trait components, not for diagnosing students from personality questionnaires.
Neuroticism and Intelligence Are Different Constructs
Academic achievement is influenced by cognitive ability, prior knowledge, instruction, motivation, self-regulation, opportunity, and many other variables. Neuroticism is not an intelligence measure. A higher neuroticism score does not mean lower IQ, weaker reasoning ability, or reduced learning capacity.
Noftle and Robins studied Big Five traits, SAT scores, and GPA across four samples and four personality inventories. Openness was the strongest Big Five predictor of SAT verbal scores, whereas conscientiousness was the strongest predictor of high-school and college GPA. See Noftle and Robins (2007).
Some studies examine interactions between personality and intelligence, but interaction findings are more specific than broad trait–achievement correlations. They depend on sample, measure, model specification, and educational context. They should not be converted into a claim that neuroticism is a proxy for ability.
For the separate evidence base on ability and the trait, see Neuroticism and Intelligence: IQ, Cognitive Performance, and Common Myths.
Conscientiousness Is the More Consistent Personality Predictor
A useful way to understand neuroticism’s modest academic association is to compare it with conscientiousness. Conscientiousness encompasses tendencies toward organization, persistence, dependability, planning, and goal-directed self-control. Across meta-analyses, those tendencies show a much more consistent relationship with grades and academic achievement than neuroticism does.
This comparison also helps prevent a misleading personality stereotype. A student can be high in both neuroticism and conscientiousness. Such a profile may involve substantial worry alongside strong preparation and persistence. Another student may be low in neuroticism but also low in conscientiousness, experiencing little anticipatory distress while struggling with deadlines or sustained study. Big Five traits describe separate dimensions; they do not sort people into one-dimensional “good student” and “bad student” types.
The 2026 MASEM result reinforces this point. Once all five traits were modeled together, conscientiousness retained a clear positive unique association with academic performance while neuroticism did not. For prediction at the broad trait level, this is stronger evidence than treating every emotionally reactive student as academically vulnerable.
Can Worry Ever Help Academic Performance?
Worry can sometimes prompt preparation. A student who anticipates possible failure may begin revising earlier, check instructions repeatedly, seek clarification, or devote extra effort to reducing uncertainty. This makes it plausible that some forms of evaluative concern can coexist with high achievement, especially when the student also has effective study habits, sufficient time, and strong self-regulation.
The same worry can also become costly. Repetitive negative thinking can consume attention, prolong arousal, reduce sleep, increase avoidance, and make mistakes feel more threatening. Under timed examination conditions, intrusive thoughts about failure can compete with the task itself. The direction of effect depends on intensity, controllability, context, and what the person does in response to the emotion.
Research therefore supports a conditional model more than a slogan such as “anxiety makes you work harder.” The small positive neuroticism estimate among freshmen and sophomores in the 2025 meta-analysis is compatible with compensatory effort as one possibility, but it does not demonstrate that compensatory effort caused the subgroup association. That mechanism requires more direct evidence.
High Neuroticism Does Not Mean Low Academic Achievement
Many high-neuroticism students perform very well academically. A broad personality trait shifts probabilities across populations; it does not specify an individual outcome. Academic achievement can be supported by ability, prior preparation, conscientiousness, interest, structured routines, social support, effective teaching, accommodations, financial stability, health care, sleep, and learned coping strategies.
The reverse is also true. Low neuroticism does not guarantee academic success. Emotional stability may reduce distress reactivity, but it does not automatically create subject knowledge, motivation, time management, effective learning strategies, or access to educational resources.
This is why personality should be used for understanding patterns rather than forecasting a student’s future from a single score. The most defensible prediction is modest and probabilistic: neuroticism can shape the emotional conditions under which learning occurs, while grades remain the product of many interacting influences.
Neuroticism, Mental Health, and Academic Difficulty
Neuroticism is a transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of mental-health problems, particularly internalizing symptoms, but a personality trait is not a mental disorder. High neuroticism does not by itself establish generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, OCD, PTSD, ADHD, autism, a personality disorder, or any other diagnosis.
For academic performance, this distinction matters because psychiatric symptoms can create additional mechanisms that are not captured by trait neuroticism alone. Persistent depression can affect energy, motivation, concentration, sleep, and attendance. Clinically significant anxiety can produce avoidance or severe test distress. Medication effects, treatment access, disability accommodations, and episode timing can also matter. Those are clinical questions requiring their own evidence and assessment.
The broader distinction between trait vulnerability and diagnosis is covered in Neuroticism and Mental Health: Why the Trait Is a Transdiagnostic Risk Factor.
What Student Studies Can and Cannot Prove
Much of the literature linking personality to grades is observational. Researchers measure personality and academic outcomes and estimate associations. Even longitudinal studies improve temporal ordering without automatically proving causation. Students are not randomly assigned to neuroticism levels, and many third variables can influence both personality reports and achievement.
State effects can also complicate interpretation. A student completing a personality questionnaire during a period of intense stress, depression, or anxiety may report more negative emotionality than they would at another time. Stable trait variance remains meaningful, but self-reports always contain some state influence and measurement error. This is especially important when personality is assessed close to a high-stakes examination.
Selection effects matter as well. University samples are already selected by prior achievement, admissions systems, socioeconomic factors, and decisions about whether and where to enroll. Results from university students cannot automatically be generalized to elementary school, secondary school, vocational education, adult education, or populations that never entered higher education.
Why Academic Context Changes the Relationship
Year of study
The 2025 meta-analysis found that year of study moderated the neuroticism association, with a small positive estimate among freshmen and sophomores. Early university years often involve unfamiliar demands, new social environments, and uncertainty about standards. Those conditions may make emotional reactivity more behaviorally consequential, but the meta-analysis does not identify a single mechanism.
Academic major
Different majors impose different mixes of timed testing, writing, laboratory work, public performance, collaborative projects, clinical placements, and cumulative assessment. Trait–performance relationships can therefore vary because the criterion changes. A GPA in one program is not psychometrically identical to a GPA in another.
Culture and educational systems
Grading practices, competition, entrance systems, instructor expectations, social norms around achievement, and access to support differ across countries and institutions. The 2025 meta-analysis identified cultural context as a moderator for some Big Five relationships. This cautions against presenting one pooled coefficient as a universal psychological constant.
Measurement method
Personality instruments differ in item wording and facet coverage; academic outcomes differ in reliability and source. Official GPA, self-reported GPA, examination scores, and teacher ratings can produce different associations. Measurement heterogeneity is one reason effect sizes should be interpreted as estimates from specific research designs rather than as personal destiny.
What About Procrastination and Avoidance?
It is tempting to explain any neuroticism–achievement relationship through procrastination, but this is too simple. Procrastination has a negative association with academic performance, yet neuroticism is not its strongest personality correlate. Self-efficacy, self-control, task aversiveness, impulsivity, and conscientiousness-related processes play major roles in procrastination research.
A student may respond to worry by delaying a task, by overpreparing, by seeking reassurance, or by starting earlier. The behavioral response matters. Therefore, when a high-neuroticism student struggles academically, it is more useful to identify the specific pattern—avoidance, sleep loss, inefficient checking, test anxiety, low self-efficacy, time-management problems, or something else—than to treat the personality trait itself as the problem.
Practical Implications for Students
Interpret the trait as context, not a verdict
A personality score can help describe recurring emotional tendencies. It cannot tell you what grade you will receive, whether you belong in a demanding field, or whether you are capable of high achievement. If a score feels personally meaningful, use it to ask better questions about situations and habits rather than to assign yourself a fixed academic identity.
Target the mechanism that is actually interfering
If worry is most disruptive during examinations, evidence on test anxiety is more directly relevant than a global neuroticism score. If stress is chronic across the semester, workload, sleep, financial pressure, health, and recovery may deserve attention. If assignments are repeatedly delayed, study routines and self-regulation are more specific targets. If mood or anxiety symptoms are persistent and impairing, clinical assessment may be appropriate.
Protect sleep and recovery
Higher neuroticism can be associated with prolonged cognitive and emotional reactivity after stress. Academic cultures that reward constant activation can turn that vulnerability into cumulative fatigue. Regular sleep, breaks, realistic planning, and protected recovery time are not personality cures; they are ways of reducing avoidable strain on attention and learning.
Use preparation to reduce uncertainty
Clear study plans, practice under realistic conditions, early clarification of assessment criteria, and distributed preparation can reduce uncertainty before high-stakes tasks. For some students, the useful goal is not eliminating every anxious feeling but making sure anxiety does not determine whether they begin, persist, or perform the task.
Seek help for symptoms, not for a trait label
If anxiety, depressed mood, panic, compulsions, trauma symptoms, severe sleep disruption, or another mental-health problem is impairing daily life or study, the clinically relevant issue is the symptom pattern and its functional impact. A high neuroticism score may provide background information, but it does not replace diagnostic assessment.
Can Reducing Test Anxiety Improve Academic Performance?
Intervention evidence supports the value of targeting specific academic anxiety when it is impairing. A 2019 meta-analysis of 44 randomized controlled trials involving 2,209 test-anxious university students found that interventions reduced test anxiety and produced a smaller improvement in academic performance at post-treatment. The authors also reported publication-bias and reporting-quality concerns, so the effect estimates require moderation. See Huntley and colleagues (2019).
This evidence does not show that neuroticism must be “treated” in order to improve grades. Test anxiety is a more specific and potentially modifiable problem. Symptom change, situational anxiety change, and personality-trait change are distinct outcomes. A student can improve academic functioning even if their broad personality profile remains relatively similar.
Implications for Educators and Academic Advisers
Personality data should not be used as a deterministic screening tool for academic potential. The average neuroticism–achievement association is too small and context-dependent to justify labeling high-neuroticism students as weak performers or low-neuroticism students as safe from difficulty.
The more defensible use of personality science is to improve understanding of variability in student experience. Students who are more emotionally reactive may benefit from clear expectations, predictable assessment structures, early feedback, accessible support, and environments in which seeking help does not carry unnecessary social cost. Those supports can be useful without assuming that every high-neuroticism student needs them or that personality determines who will succeed.
Academic advising should also avoid career prescriptions based on a single Big Five domain. Academic grades, occupational fit, leadership, stress tolerance, interests, values, ability, opportunity, and health are separate questions with overlapping but distinct evidence bases.
For the broader occupational evidence, see Neuroticism at Work: Stress, Behavior, and Workplace Experience.
From Academic Achievement to Later Outcomes
Academic performance should not be treated as a proxy for every later-life outcome. The personality processes associated with grades are not identical to those involved in career choice, leadership, job performance, or workplace well-being.
For the distinct career-choice question, see Neuroticism and Career Choice: What Personality Can—and Cannot—Predict.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is neuroticism bad for grades?
Not in a simple or universal way. Across large syntheses, the average association between neuroticism and academic performance is small and sometimes close to zero. Some contexts show modest negative associations, while some subgroup analyses show small positive associations. Conscientiousness is the more consistent Big Five predictor of academic achievement.
Does high neuroticism mean a student is less intelligent?
No. Neuroticism and intelligence are different constructs. Neuroticism describes a tendency toward negative emotionality and reactivity; intelligence measures cognitive abilities. A personality score cannot substitute for an ability assessment.
Can a highly neurotic student be a top student?
Yes. Trait scores shift average probabilities and do not set individual ceilings. High achievement can coexist with high neuroticism, especially when ability, preparation, conscientiousness, effective study strategies, and support are strong.
Can low neuroticism predict academic success?
Low neuroticism, or greater emotional stability, may reduce distress reactivity on average, but it does not guarantee high grades. Academic success also depends on knowledge, ability, motivation, self-regulation, teaching, opportunity, and many contextual factors.
Is neuroticism the same as test anxiety?
No. Neuroticism is a broad personality trait. Test anxiety is a situation-specific response to evaluative settings. They can be related without being interchangeable.
Does neuroticism cause academic stress?
Neuroticism is reliably associated with higher perceived stress, but association alone does not establish a simple one-way causal pathway. Stress can also affect personality reports and behavior, and both are influenced by environmental and personal factors.
Does a high neuroticism score predict a low GPA?
A score cannot predict an individual GPA with useful certainty. Meta-analytic associations are population averages, and the neuroticism–academic performance association is generally small. Interpretation also depends on the instrument, norms, scoring method, and population.
Which Big Five trait best predicts academic performance?
Across major meta-analyses, conscientiousness is the most consistent Big Five predictor of grades and academic achievement. Its effect is still probabilistic rather than deterministic.
Can anxiety ever improve performance?
Mild evaluative concern can sometimes coexist with greater preparation or vigilance, but anxiety is not a general performance enhancer. High or poorly controlled test anxiety is associated with poorer academic outcomes on average.
Should a student try to lower neuroticism to improve grades?
Academic support is usually more useful when it targets the specific mechanism causing difficulty, such as test anxiety, chronic stress, sleep disruption, avoidance, ineffective study strategies, or clinically significant symptoms. Neuroticism is a personality trait rather than a disease that requires a cure.
Conclusion
Neuroticism matters for academic life more clearly as an emotional-context variable than as a strong direct predictor of grades. Students higher in neuroticism tend, on average, to experience more perceived stress and may be more sensitive to evaluation, uncertainty, mistakes, and threat. Those tendencies can influence concentration, recovery, test anxiety, and study behavior. Yet the broad trait’s direct relationship with academic performance is small, inconsistent across contexts, and often close to zero.
The newest evidence sharpens this conclusion. A 2025 meta-analysis found substantial contextual moderation and a small positive neuroticism association among freshmen and sophomores, while a 2026 multivariate reanalysis found no significant unique neuroticism effect after the Big Five were modeled jointly. These results argue for precision rather than personality stereotypes.
Academic achievement is produced by an interacting system of ability, prior knowledge, conscientiousness, motivation, self-regulation, stress, health, instruction, opportunity, and context. Neuroticism can shape how that system feels and sometimes how a student responds to it. It does not determine who is intelligent, who belongs in higher education, or who will succeed.
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References
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