Academic burnout among accounting majors: the roles of self-compassion, test anxiety, and maladaptive perfectionism

Academic burnout, a significant negative predictor of academic performance, appears to be increasing. We examine antecedents of academic burnout among accounting majors – cognitive test anxiety, maladaptive perfectionism, and self-compassion. Based on a survey of 159 accounting majors across three years, we find that more than 85% of accounting majors report modest to high levels of burnout. Cognitive test anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism are at higher levels than observed in earlier samples of college students. Academic burnout is higher among those with higher levels of cognitive test anxiety and somewhat lower among those with higher levels of self-compassion. Although maladaptive perfectionism is not found to be related to academic burnout, it does lead to higher levels of cognitive test anxiety. Higher levels of self-compassion lead to lower levels of both cognitive test anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism, and is particularly critical to alleviating academic burnout when examining the test anxiety subfactor for freezing up (i.e. when students are unable to organize thoughts during an exam due to anxiety). In all, our study provides a first step in unpacking the antecedents of academic burnout among accounting majors.