Conscientiousness and self-motivation as mutually compensatory predictors of university-level GPA

To help account for variability across studies in the predictive utility of conscientiousness, we proposed that conscientiousness and self-motivation mutually compensate for each other in predicting university-level academic performance. Consistent with this expectation, we found evidence of such mutual moderation in a sample of 377 college undergraduates. First, we found that conscientiousness and self-motivation compensated for each other in predicting university GPA: Students who were either high in conscientiousness or high in self-motivation had better academic performance (GPA) than those who were low in both conscientiousness and self-motivation. Second, these findings were still evident after we controlled for the students’ previous academic performance (high school rank) and academic ability (SAT/ACT). The study of mutually compensatory predictors not only offers the potential of developing better predictive models; it also helps to account for why some “main effect” predictors of university GPA are variable across studies in their degree of predictive utility.