The relationship between extraversion and ability

Stough, Brebner, Nettlebeck, Cooper, Bates, and Mangan (1996) [Stough, C., Brebner, J., Nettlebeck, T., Cooper, C. J., Bates, T., & Mangan, G. L. (1996). The relationship between intelligence, personality and inspection time. British Journal of Psychology, 87, 255–268] reported a quadratic relationship between extraversion level and scores at various intelligence tests: moderate scorers on an extraversion scale (Ambiverts) obtained the highest test scores. This paper reports an unsuccessful attempt to generalise these findings to verbal and spatial ability tests on a sample of 209 university students. It is suggested that the link between extraversion level and ability/intelligence test score is likely to be fragile and inconsistent at best.