The desire for self-control and academic achievement: the mediating roles of self-efficacy and learning engagement of sixth-grade Chinese students

Due to the widespread benefits of self-control, more and more individuals consciously experience an eagerness to have more self-control to ensure achieving their goals. A new conception “desire for self-control” is proposed by Uziel and Baumeister ( Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43 (5), 693–705, 2017 ). This current research firstly focused on the relationship between the desire for self-control and academic achievement, and extended the underlining mechanisms by investigating the potential mediating effects of learning engagement and self-efficacy in this relationship. To test the hypotheses, self-report measures of desire for self-control, learning engagement, self-efficacy and academic achievement were administrated to 465 sixth-grade students. Results revealed that the direct prediction of desire for self-control on academic achievement was significant. Mediational analysis showed that learning engagement exerted its indirect effect on academic achievement and the three-path mediating effect of self-efficacy via learning engagement. In addition, multi-group analysis showed that the hypothesized model was not moderated by gender. Implications for future research and limitations of the present findings are discussed.