Students’ Achievement Anxiety as a Function of Spiritual Intelligence and Academic Perfectionism

Anxiety keeps students from learning and performing well, especially on the exams. It has been hypothesized that perfectionism and spiritual intelligence can affect anxiety and its management. To verify this relationship from among 3000 high school students in Babol, a sample of 342 students was selected using cluster sampling method. Utilizing known instruments data were collected and then analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis. Findings support the hypothesis as perfectionism affects anxiety directly while spiritual intelligence has in intermediary and indirect effect. Obviously people with general anxiety are more prone to suffer from test anxiety. Spiritual intelligence and positive perfectionism can reduce academic anxiety. As a result, both students and counselors can focus on spiritual beliefs in order to help with the improvement in academic achievement.