The relationship between personality traits, subjectively-assessed and fluid intelligence

This study looks at the relationship between personality traits (Big Five), fluid (Gf) and subjectively-assessed (SAI) intelligence. British and American university students together (N = 186) completed the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (Raven, Raven & Court, 1998) after estimating their intellectual ability on a normal distribution. As predicted, Openness to Experience was modestly but significantly related to both SAI (r = .20) and Gf (r = .21). SAI was also significantly correlated (negatively, r = −.21) with Neuroticism. Regressing the Big Five personality traits onto SAI scores, showed that these personality traits were found to account for between 9% and 16% of the variance in SAI. At the same time, SAI (and Openness) was a significant correlate and predictor of Gf, which suggests that SAI may be a mediating concept between personality and psychometric intelligence. Results are discussed with regard to current and future research perspectives on the relationship between personality and intelligence.