Problematic overstudying, Big Five personality, and music performance anxiety: associations with well-being and GPA

Problematic overstudying is a compulsive and pathological overinvolvement in studying leading to harm and considerable functional impairments. It is conceptualized as "study addiction," a precursor to work addiction. It has been investigated within the addictive behaviours framework in general populations of students for over a decade. A previous study analysed the problem among young musicians as a particularly vulnerable group. It found some important differences in potential personality risk factors among music academy students compared to general populations of students and showed an important role of social anxiety. The current study aimed to validate these findings in a separate larger sample and extend them by investigating the role of music performance anxiety (MPA).

The study was conducted among 213 students of music academies. Valid and reliable measures of study addiction, MPA, Big Five personality and well-being were used.

The results showed that MPA played a similar role as social anxiety in terms of being a predictor, mediator, and moderator of the main replicated effects supporting the hypothesised mechanisms regulating study addiction. However, extraversion was not associated with study addiction in multiple hierarchical regression analysis, but conscientiousness and neuroticism were. Study addiction was associated with indicators of decreased well-being, above and beyond MPA, and personality.

These results show that MPA plays an analogous role to social anxiety and that the role of Big Five personality in study addiction among young musicians requires further investigation due to inconsistent findings.