Beliefs about the relationships between personality and intelligence

Participants were asked to assess personality traits of a typical individual with high or low academic or practical abilities. Opinions about the perceived relationships between personality and intelligence strongly converged. A typical intelligent person was believed to be emotionally stable, extraverted, open to new experiences, and conscientious, differing on these traits diametrically from a typical individual endowed with low abilities. The perceived associations between ability and personality traits contrast with the typically weak correlations found between psychometrically measured intelligence and personality. Despite a considerable overlap between ability-related personality stereotypes and social desirability ratings of the personality traits, there was a discrepancy in the attitudes towards agreeableness. Although the facets of agreeableness were regarded as socially advantageous, participants did not believe that trust, straightforwardness and altruism are necessarily characteristic of a smart person.