Association Between Proactive Personality and Academic Self-Efficacy

Research about organizations has consistently revealed that proactive personality is a relatively stable disposition and a significant antecedent of self-efficacy, which generates employees' proactive behavior and thus benefits individuals and firms. Consequently, the present study aimed to examine whether the relationship between proactive personality, a general temperamental tendency, and specific self-efficacy that is focused on certain activities or tasks might emerge across contexts in an education setting with a directional effect. From a sample of 123 students, we employed a longitudinal approach using two waves of surveys to examine the directional relations between students' proactive personalities and their academic self-efficacy in education. The results showed that students' proactive personalities at Time 1 predicted change in their academic self-efficacy at Time 2, suggesting a top-down relationship. On the contrary students' academic self-efficacy at Time 1 could not predict their proactive personalities at Time 2. In short, the directional effect of proactive personality on self-efficacy across contexts was captured in this study. Implications and limitations were discussed.