What is the interaction between creativity and personality dispositions with an independent effect under the influence of an external factor such as controllable anxiety in determining research achievement of doctoral students? What behaviors can contribute to adapting and increasing the effectiveness of living and working under the conditions of stress in an academic environment? Possible responses directed at personal choice are described. In recent years, in the focus of the educational policy in our country, in parallel with the efforts to optimize the quality of education in the higher education system, serious attention has been paid to the key competencies that help the doctoral students who are completing their studies to adapt more easily to the dynamic changes, the growing professional and social demands for self-affirmation and psychosocial identity. In the composition of the key competences are social, based on personal and interpersonal competences, considered through their predicativeness. The study presents part of the results of a social experiment conducted among doctoral students at the University of Ruse, Bulgaria, with proposals for ranked selection of characteristics. The purpose of the study is to mark subsequent initiatives aimed at forming and stimulating creativity and sustainable social competence among young researchers of the third degree of higher education.