Intelligence, personality, and interests: Evidence for overlapping traits

“Most such traitlike characteristics are related to one of the big five personality dimensions (e.g. Digman, 1990; Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997), which are as follows: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience (this last dimension is sometimes labeled intellect).”

“For example, Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) provided an informative analysis of relationships between intelligence, personality, and interests; Poropat (2009) demonstrated that academic performance is associated with five-factor personality traits.”

“As observed by Ackerman and Heggestad (1997), Openness had the highest correlation with intelligence but this did not translate into Openness having the highest correlation with academic performance.”

“People who are more extraverted prefer jobs that are described as social or enterprising, such as teaching or business management (Ackerman & Heggestad 1997).”

“Other recent studies have systematically examined the structure of traits subordinate to the five factor model (Ackerman and Heggestad 1997; Paunonen 1998; Saucier and Ostendorf 1999). For illustrative purposes, the findings from the Saucier and Ostendorf (1999) study are reported.”

“People who are more extraverted may prefer jobs that are described as social or enterprising, such as teaching or business management (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997).”

“…traits: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness, each of which is a composite of more specific intercorrelated traits predicted EI would have a low but significant relation to the trait Openness (with which many intelligences correlate; Ackerman & Heggestad 1997).”

“…many more opportunities for developing mathematical and verbal ability than spatial ability (Colangelo et al., 2004; Lohman, 2005).6 Ackerman (1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997) has shown that all three of the specific abilities examined here (mathematical, spatial, and verbal) have distinctive…”

“The Journal of Social Psychology, 131, 271–283. 188. Mullen, B., Brown, R., & Smith, C. (1992). Ingroup bias as a function of salience, relevance, and status: An integration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 103–122. 189. Mullen, B., Bryant, B., & Driskell, J. E. (1997). Presence of others and arousal: An in…”

“Mental abilities in late adolescence and adulthood may be shaped and strengthened into “aptitude complexes” by educational pursuits and interests to form domain-specific knowledge such as in mathematics, sciences, or government and history (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Rolfhus & Ackerman, 1999).”

“Psychometricians have long distinguished typical performance situations from optimal or maximal performance situations (see Ackerman, 1994, 1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Cron-bach, 1949; Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2002).”

“In addition, meta-analyses on the relationship between intelligence and personality suggest that Extraversion and Openness to Experience are related to intelligence (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Judge, Jackson, Shaw, Scott, & Rich, 2007).”

“Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) suggested that there are substantial commonalities among families of nonability traits (e.g., personality, interests, motivation, self-concept) as well as between ability traits and nonability traits, making it possible to form meaningful clusters of trait complexes…”

“Along with the EI vector of effects drawn from the present work, we used metaanalytic true score estimates from four prior meta-analyses (i.e., Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Mount et al., 2005; Schmidt et al., 2008).”

“All tests of intelligence or cognitive aptitude are optimal performance assessments, whereas measures of thinking dispositions are often assessed under typical performance conditions ( Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996; Norris & Ennis, 1989; Perkins, 1995; Sternberg, 2003; Zeidner…”

“In particular, given that a large body of research has established measures of cognitive ability as important predictors of academic success (e.g., Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997), it is of interest to determine whether personality variables are able to increase the prediction of academic performance…”

“The above researchers go on to say that it is thus not surprising that EI and GMA are not correlated as few self-report measures of personality are correlated with general intelligence (see also, Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Ones, 1993).”

“But does cognitive ability predict people’s subjective experience of life events? Personality research suggests that people of higher intelligence are modestly more ‘‘open to experience’’ (aesthetically sensitive, novelty seeking, unconventional, curious) than are people of lower intelligence ( Ackerman & Heggestad, 1…”

“Further, McCrae (1993) and Holland, Dollinger, Holland, and MacDonald (1995) reported significant correlations (r ¼ :33 and r ¼ :42) between the Openness to Experience factor and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (see also Ackerman, 1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; McCrae & Costa, 1985; Rolfhus & Ackerman, 1996).”

“Furthermore, meta-analyses with a small number of correlations in some cells have been carried out when the area of investigation is theoretically relevant and important (see, for example, Ackerman and Heggestad 1997).”

“(20)Carroll (1993) and Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) discuss more disaggregated facets of cognitive ability. (21)This practice is true even among leading professional psychologists. For example, all of these measures are assumed to capture intelligence in Flynn (2007), Nisbett (2009), and Nisbett et al. (2012). (22)Se…”

“Moreover, because Openness is positively correlated with a broad range of cognitive abilities, including vocabulary (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997;Gignac, Stough, & Loukomitis, 2004), it is reasonable to suppose that highly Open individuals use “big words” more often, effectively resulting in strong…”

“Personality and interest measures generally exhibit weak correlations with cognitive ability measures (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997) and may also be useful in selection of graduate students.”

“At present, there is no widely-accepted, meaningful taxonomy of lower level personality traits, although there are a number of efforts presently focused on developing such a framework (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Hofstee, de Raad, & Goldberg, 1992; Hough, 2003; Saucier & Ostendorf, 1999).”

“Openness/Intellect has been shown to be more strongly associated with gC than gF (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Ashton et al., 2000), but whether gF and gC contribute independently to Openness/Intellect has not previously been tested.”

“Although research has demonstrated a number of small correlations between abilities and 326 Volume 1—Number 4 interests (Ackerman, 1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Schmidt, Lubinski, & Benbow, 1998), they are sufficiently uncorrelated that they must be assessed independently for optimal…”

“However, not all individual differences are KSAOs: attitudes, satisfaction, motivation, emotion, and related characteristics are not KSAOs because they are highly variable, more situationally specific, and situationally induced (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Murphy, 2012).”

“Furthermore, Openness is associated with general intelligence and domain-specific knowledge (e.g., Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Ackerman & Rolfhus, 1999).”

“The prediction of academic success or failure has been the main objective of developing intelligence tests ( Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997 ).”

“1999; Perkins and Tishman, 2001), typical intellectual engagement (Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997), and practical intelligence (Sternberg et al.”

“Psychometricians have long distinguished typical performance situations from optimal (sometimes termed maximal) performance situations (Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997; Ackerman and Kanfer, 2004).”

“The significantly positive level of intraindividual coupling found between these constructs supports earlier variable-centered research findings, such as Ackerman and Heggestad’s (1997) in which ability and interest were found”

“Carroll (1993) and Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) discuss more disaggregated facets of cognitive ability.”

“Consistent with the conclusion of Ackerman and Heggestad (1997), Sullivan and Hansen (2004) view interests as representing individual differences in the types of activities that individuals find enjoyable and motivating, whereas personality reflects behavioral tendencies, which play a role in both…”

“traditionally defined “intelligence” or what psychologists often call “g” referring to general cognitive ability) (Davies et al., 1998; Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997).”

“Thus, correlations in the region of r = .2–.4 have been reported between Openness and ability measures, particularly tests of crystallized ability (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997).”

“Recent research by Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) has suggested that individual difference variables such as personality, intelligence, and vocational interests can be used to explain not only variance in academic performance, but also the processes by which traits influence examination outcomes.”

“…Force’ review of what is and what is not known about intelligence, Neisser et al. (1996) are unanimous in accepting that intelligence test scores predict a wide range of indicators of academic success (cf. Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; 0191-8869/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.”

“In general terms, the relationship between AP and personality traits has been thoroughly described by Ackerman et al. (Ackerman, 1999; Ackerman & Beier, 2003; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Goff & Ackerman, 1992).”

“…WM, EF, and Gf to learning and academic achievement It is well known that intelligence strongly contributes to learning and academic success (e.g., Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Farsides & Woodfield, 2003) and that measures of intelligence predict a wide range of indicators of academic success…”

“The Big Five trait that has most consistently been linked with intelligence is openness (Ackerman and Heggestad 1997; Moutafi et al. 2004).”

“…small correlations across ability, interest, and personality dimensions have been used to define affective– cognitive trait clusters (Ackerman, 1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997), taxons (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984), and aptitude complexes (Corno, Cronbach et al., 2002; R. E. Snow, Corno, & Jackson,…”

“Such an explanation of the discrepant findings would be consistent with theoretical views that emphasise the difference between typical information processing and maximal information processing (Ackerman, 1996 ; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997 ).”

“Other research has examined associations between the RIASEC types and indices of actual or perceived ability (see Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997).”

“Even that level of validity seems unlikely for proxy tests, given that they emphasize typical performance as opposed to the maximal performance tapped by IQ tests (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Paulhus & Martin, 1987).”

“The impact of NFC as general disposition to seek out and enjoy complex cognition might be underestimated in the test situation because the test might have created a highly motivating situation so that most of the individuals were encouraged to show maximal performance (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997).”

“Intelligence test scores correlate with Openness/Intellect at around r = .3 (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; DeYoung, 2011).”

“Neuroticism consistently shows a weak negative correlation with intelligence tests (r = –.15; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997), but this correlation appears to be due to test anxiety (Moutafi, Furnham, & Tsaousis, 2006).”

“…a distinction long made by psychometricians — that between typical performance situations and optimal (sometimes termed maximal) performance situations (see Ackerman, 1994, 1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Ackerman & Kanfer, 2004; see also, Cronbach, 1949; Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2002).”

“And these in turn are likely to have differential implications for commitment to developing expertise and persistence in STEM (Ackerman, 1996; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Schmidt, Lubinski, & Benbow, 1998; Webb et al., 2007).”

“(15)See Carroll (1993) and Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) for discussions. (16)See, for example, Nisbett, Aronson, Blair, Dickens, Flynn, Halpern, and Turkheimer (2012). (17)Roberts, Goff, Anjoul, Kyllonen, Pallier, and Stankov (2000). (18)Raven, Raven, and Court (1988). The high correlation between scores on intellige…”

“…correlations and review of the empirical findings on ability-interest and personality-interest relationships have produced an integrated model identifying four categories or ‘‘trait complexes’’: science/math, clerical/conventional, social, and intellectual/cultural (Ackerman & Heggestad 1997).”

“18), and between personality and grades.”

“Persons high in openness to experience seem to have higher verbal skills such as vocabulary and general knowledge (e.g. Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997).”

“…with previous research, 51,52,63 except for a positive association with perceptual speed, which has been previously observed in both young 51 and old 52 persons, suggesting that it may reflect an association between the conscientious-ness trait complex and clerical skill that develops…”