Predicting school success: Comparing Conscientiousness, Grit, and Emotion Regulation Ability

•Examine self-regulation traits and abilities predicting high school success.•Success criteria included measures from school records and student-reports.•Test predictive validity of Conscientiousness, Grit, and Emotion Regulation.•Emotion Regulation Ability, but not Grit showed incremental validity.

The present paper examines validity of three proposed self-regulation predictors of school outcomes – Conscientiousness, Grit and Emotion Regulation Ability (ERA). In a sample of private high school students (N = 213) we measured these constructs along with indices of school success obtained from records (rule violating behavior, academic recognitions, honors, and GPA) and self-reported satisfaction with school. Regression analyses showed that after controlling for other Big Five traits, all school outcomes were significantly predicted by Conscientiousness and ERA, but not Grit. The discussion focuses on the importance of broad personality traits (Conscientiousness; measure of typical performance) and self-regulation abilities (ERA; measure of maximal performance) in predicting school success.