Background <p>This study aimed to investigate the relationship between personality traits, academic burnout, and academic engagement among dental students with emotion regulation as a mediating role. It sought to identify personality predictors within the HEXACO model and compare how these traits directly and indirectly affect students’ academic engagement and burnout.</p> Methods <p>The participants were 228 dental students from School of Dentistry. Data were collected using the HEXACO personality inventory, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey (MBI-SS), and the Korean Academic Engagement Inventory (KAEI). The study employed structural equation modeling to explore the direct and mediated relationships between personality traits, emotion regulation, academic burnout, and academic engagement.</p> Results <p>The findings indicated that specific personality traits, notably Extraversion, directly and indirectly influence both academic burnout and engagement, with emotion regulation serving as a mediating factor. Extraversion affected engagement directly and indirectly through cognitive reappraisal. Moreover, the burnout model revealed that, besides Extraversion, Agreeableness and Openness to experience also had a direct impact on burnout, suggesting a broader range of personality traits influencing burnout compared to engagement.</p> Conclusions <p>The study underscores the significant role of personality traits, particularly Extraversion, in determining academic burnout and engagement, with emotion regulation often playing a mediating role. The findings of this study indicate that personality traits can be approached in a distinct manner when developing strategies to mitigate burnout and increase engagement among dental students. These insights could inform targeted interventions aimed at improving academic engagement and performance.</p>