Personality and intellectual competence: a psychometric examination of the relation between the big 5, academic performance and intelligence

This thesis concerns the relationship between personality traits and intellectual competence. It contains five chapters and ten independent but related empirical studies. Chapter one presents a review of the salient literature in the area. It is divided into three sub-sections: personality and psychometric intelligence, personality and academic performance (AP), and personality and subjectively-assessed intelligence (SAI). Chapter two (studies 1 to 4) examines the relationship between the Big Five personality traits with several psychometric intelligence tests, SAL and gender. Results indicated that personality traits (notably Neuroticism and Agreeableness) are significantly related to SAI, but not to psychometric intelligence. Since SAI is also significantly related to psychometric intelligence, it is suggested that SAI may mediate the relationship between personality and psychometric intelligence. Chapter three (studies5 to 8) examines the relationship between psychometric intelligence and personality (the Big Five and the Gigantic Three) with AP. Results indicate that personality traits (notably Conscientiousness and Psychoticism) are significant predictors of AP, accounting for unique variance in AP even when psychometric intelligence and academic behaviour are considered as predictors. Chapter four (studies 9& 10) looks at the relationship between personality and psychometric intelligence with a measure of art judgement as well as several indicators of previous art experience. Results indicate that art judgement is related to both personality and intelligence, and may therefore be considered a mixed construct. Chapter five presents a brief summary of the results and conclusions