🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Experts have often commented on the distinction between personality and intelligence, as the former is generally assessed by subjective methods such as questionnaires, while the latter can be quantitatively measured using tests. So do certain personality traits signify intelligence? The answer is a qualified yes.
"Personality is very important, but very different to get a grasp of, evaluate or understand," Yoav Ganzach, dean of the Business School of the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo in Israel, told Newsweek. "With intelligence, there is no doubt about it; if someone succeeds at an intelligence test, they are smart."
While many experts believe some personality traits are more closely related to intelligence than others, there is less agreement about how they interact.
Fitting Intelligence Into the Big Five
Psychologists traditionally define personality according to five "domains"—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism—each of which can be further broken into a range of characteristics.
Openness is the dimension most commonly linked to intelligence, University of Minnesota Associate Professor of Psychology Colin DeYoung told Newsweek. There has been an historical debate in personality psychology about whether to label the dimension openness or intellect, he added.
While describing someone as smart, bright or intellectual clearly relates to intellect, imagination, creativity and artistic interests have also been viewed as related traits that are part of the broader dimension, he says. "It does encompass people more intellectual, interested in abstract ideas, but also people more interested in art or perceptual experience," he said.
Although all of these elements are important to understanding the relationship between intelligence and personality, traits such as intellectualism, confidence in one's own abilities and interest in abstract concepts are clearly related to IQ, and therefore bear a closer relationship with intelligence, DeYoung added.
Intelligence also has a connection with empathy and compassion, according to DeYoung. This is hardly counterintuitive, he said, as people who are more sympathetic to the perspective of others and able to put themselves in someone else's shoes have a more complex way of seeing the world.
Perseverance, Conscientiousness and Getting Ahead
While openness is the most frequently cited personality domain linked to intelligence, conscientiousness is another trait that is often connected to intelligence, although it is sometimes subject to conflicting interpretations, according to both DeYoung and Ganzach.
Ganzach refers to this trait as "grit" or "perseverance." Although he acknowledged that these traits are often seen in successful people, his research has suggested that intelligence is ultimately more important when it comes to success. Self-confidence and self-esteem have significant links to intelligence, he said, possibly because intelligent people are more successful in life and feel they have more control."
DeYoung also acknowledged the contradictions that exist between conscientiousness and intelligence.
"One of the things people have found studying academic or workplace performance is that the two best predictors are intelligence and conscientiousness," he said. "It's somewhat intuitive; either you work really hard or are really smart and some combination of the two is optimal. But one thing that has been found in some studies is that there might be a negative correlation with conscientiousness. If you aren't as smart, you might be prone to being more organized to compensate for that."
Personality traits linked with intelligence are affected by both genes and a person's environment; experiences such as travel or living abroad can increase openness to new experiences and, in turn, affect intelligence, DeYoung and Ganzach said.
Education, they added, is one of the most important environmental components of intelligence. Consequently, neither personality nor intelligence should be seen as static, DeYoung said.
"Personality traits do change over people's lifetimes," he said. "Not easily or dramatically, but they can change."
