Background: in the school stage, adolescents experience different emotional and motivational states involved in the learning process that play a fundamental role in their personal and academic development. In this way, the study focuses on analyzing the relationships between emotional regulation, self-efficacy and academic performance, as well as the possible mediating role of self-efficacy in both. Methods: the study included 2204 students, both male (N = 1193; 54.12%) and female (N = 1011; 45.87%) with ages ranging from 12 to 18 years (M = 14.69; DT = 1.76). The measures used for the investigation were the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES) and average marks were used to measure students’ academic performance. Results: The results of the study revealed a self-determined behavioral pattern characterized by high scores in emotional regulation, self-efficacy and academic performance. Likewise, the mediating role of self-efficacy between emotional regulation and student academic performance was significant. Conclusion: the influence of the academic self-efficacy variable as a mediator between the studied constructs is denoted, as well as the importance of promoting adaptive behaviors in the classroom that can lead to adequate personal development of students together with optimal academic performance.

The concept of intelligence has been extensively studied, undergoing an evolution from a unitary concept to a more elaborate and complex multidimensional one. In addition, several research studies have focused their efforts for decades on the study of intelligence as a predictor of academic performance of students at different educational stages, being a stable and highly relevant predictor along with other variables such as executive functions, social context, culture or parental guardianship. Thus, the present study, based on a systematic review and meta-analysis, includes 27 studies with a total sample of 42,061 individuals. The main objective was to analyse the relationship between intelligence and academic performance using different predictive models that include moderating variables such as country of origin, type of intelligence, gender and age. The findings of this research highlight the significant, positive and moderate relationship between intelligence and academic performance (r = 0.367; p < 0.001), highlighting the predictive capacity on school performance when the type of intelligence (general and implicit; 35%) or the country of origin (45%) is taken as a moderating variable, with the explanatory models on age or sex not being significant. Therefore, it can be concluded that intelligence, in addition to being a good predictor of academic performance, is influenced depending on the type of intelligence or theoretical model taken as a reference, and also depending on the country or culture of origin.

Parental educational styles have a significant effect in personal development. These styles (authoritative, democratic, permissive and neglectful) can be related to affects and social skills at the individual level. The study presented here, which comprised 456 participants (151 men; 33.11%), with an average age of 22.01 years (s.d. = 2.80), aimed to analyse the relationship between parental styles, affects and social skills, as well as the role played by affects in the relationship between parental style and social skills. The results suggest that the constructs under study are closely related. The most common parental style is democratic. By gender, permissive styles were more often applied to women and authoritative styles to men. No significant gender differences were found in the application of democratic and neglectful parental styles. In terms of emotional support, women were found to have higher negative affect scores and men higher emotional support scores. People with parents that use democratic and permissive styles scored higher in all variables related to affects and social skills, which challenges the notion that democratic styles are the best parental styles in terms of socialisation of children. The results of the affect and social skills scales were analysed in relation to parenting styles, indicating that children educated under a democratic parental regime tend to yield higher scores in terms of social skills than children educated under any other form of parental regime and medium scores in terms of affects. Finally, it was found that parenting styles have a direct influence on social skills, which tend to improve when affects play a mediating role between these two constructs. These results suggest that parenting styles are closely related to affects and social skills. In addition, they also suggest that affects play a mediating role in the relationship between parenting styles and social skills. Finally, owing to the impact that parenting styles have on affects and social skills, more research is needed to address this issue.

El objetivo del presente trabajo fue analizar la relación entre la inteligencia emocional, el burnout académico y el rendimiento escolar en una muestra de 1756 estudiantes adolescentes pertenecientes a nueve centros de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO). Los instrumentos utilizados fueron las versiones españolas del Traid Meta-Mood Scale-24 (TMMS-24) y el Maslach Burnout Inventory Student-Survey (MBI-SS); y el rendimiento escolar se cuantificó a través de la nota media de cada alumno. Se realizó un estudio ex post-facto de carácter prospectivo con un diseño descriptivo simple. Los resultados mostraron relaciones positivas del rendimiento escolar con las dimensiones de comprensión y regulación emocional, así como con la eficacia académica; y relación negativa con el agotamiento físico/emocional y cinismo. Los resultados resaltan la influencia de los recursos personales asociados a la inteligencia emocional en la prevención de la aparición del burnout, así como en la mejora de la eficacia personal que pueda conducir a un mayor rendimiento. Se desprende la necesidad de promover las habilidades emocionales en el aula como facilitadoras de las actitudes positivas hacia el desempeño escolar y la prevención del burnout académico.

Internalizing problems (depression, anxiety, social anxiety, somatic complaints, post-traumatic symptoms, and obsession-compulsion) are very important in adolescents’ development. These problems can be related with people who lack social skills and poorly handle their emotions. This study assessed 1358 secondary education students (12–17 years) to analyze the relationship linking internalizing problems, emotional intelligence, and social skills. The results showed not only how these constructs were related, but how students’ internalizing problems varied according to their emotional intelligence and social skills. They also indicated that two in every three males, and just over one in every two females, obtained high scores for internalizing problems. The model showed a good fit: χ2(85) = 201.161 p < 0.001; χ2/gl = 2.367; CFI = 0.919; NFI = 0.869; TLI = 0.900; RMSEA = 0.075, IC 95% (0.062–0.089). Finally, gender influenced the way that internalizing problems, emotional intelligence, and social skills were related, and an inverse relation appeared to link internalizing problems, emotional intelligence (r = − .77), and social skills (r = − .52) for females, while this relationship was poorer for males. By way of conclusion, we state that internalizing problems are related with emotional intelligence and social skills in secondary education students, but this relationship differs according to gender.

This study examines the relationship between social skills and happiness in 1st-year Teaching School students, as well as possible gender differences. The sample comprised 243 Teaching School students (Primary Education) in Zaragoza, including 110 men (45.27%) and 133 women (54.73%), aged 18–25 (average age 20.23 years; s.d. = 1.586). In order to analyse the relationship between social skills and subjective happiness, the Scale of Social Skills and Subjective Happiness Scale were used. While men scored higher in all social skills-related factors, women scored higher in all factors related to happiness. The study shows that factors such as self-expression in social settings and the ability to say no and cut off social interactions have a direct and significant effect on happiness among men, while self-expression in social settings and the ability to express anger led to a higher perception of happiness among women. Similarly, situations such as asking for and defending rights have an indirect and significant effect in men, reducing their levels of happiness. In the case of women, no social skills factors were found that led to lower happiness. It may be concluded that significant gender differences exist, although broader and lateral studies are needed in order to examine the relationship between gender identities, social skills and subjective happiness more in depth, and thus, understand the effect of these constructs in the development of personality.