Academic motivation is defined as the common motivational state brought about and related with the training provided in a given specialty. 290 students took part, 60 of whom study “National Security” as their major course of study. The aim of the research is to bring to the fore the significant personality traits and emotions that affect academic motivation. Three types of psychological tools have been applied adapted by Velichkov, Radoslavova and Petkov. The data have been processed with SPSS-21. The results show that personality traits and emotions do affect academic motivation. Significant correlations have been found between personality traits and academic motivation in cases of lowered self-esteem, spontaneous aggression, irritability and openness. The basic conclusions are that the combination of certain personality traits lowers academic motivation. It also turns out that the trend to establishing friendly terms raises academic motivation. Academic motivation stimulates the search of additional information on the studied subjects and is a crucial factor for the formation of better specialists.