Academic buoyancy has been shown to contribute to adaptive emotional, motivational, and academic outcomes. Previous work suggests that students’ emotional intelligence, self-compassion, and achievement goals are key determinants of academic buoyancy. However, to date, no study has examined the combined influence of these factors on students’ academic buoyancy. Thus, this study investigated if the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic buoyancy is mediated by self-compassion and achievement goals in a serial fashion. University students (N = 498, 87.6% female, 67.6% white, \(\overline{X }\) age = 28.10 ± 9.46) completed the following instruments: Brief Emotional Intelligence Scale, Self-Compassion Scale–Short Form, 3 × 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire, and Academic Buoyancy Scale. Using mediation techniques, we determined that the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic buoyancy was mediated by both self-compassion and specific achievement goal constructs. Specifically, the indirect effect of emotional intelligence was shown to decrease academic buoyancy when the mediation pathway included self-compassion followed by Task-Approach, Other-Approach, or Task-Avoidance goals. The unexpected indirect relationships between emotional intelligence and academic buoyancy resulted from a negative association between self-compassion and the achievement goal constructs. Thus, although emotional intelligence enhanced self-compassion, self-compassion was shown to undermine academic goal striving and subsequent academic buoyancy. This study broadens our understanding of the factors influencing academic buoyancy and underscores the potential drawbacks of excessive self-compassion.
