Chapter 7
A Theoretical Account of Our Results
CHAPTER SUMMARY
- Covarying abilities and personality traits suggest trait complexes that reflect strategies for setting, progressing toward, and achieving or revising goals via the coordinated use of resources. Overarching patterns in personality-cognitive ability relations indicate that trait constellations serve to (1) maintain homeostasis and (2) facilitate change. Trait complexes can be further distinguished according to whether they focus internally on the individual or externally on the environment.
- Trait complexes for homeostasis support internal stability and maintain the individual in ever-changing environments. These trait complexes likely evolved to cope with resource-scarce environments.
- Internally-focused homeostasis constellations are evidenced by neuroticism and its facets’ associations with lower levels of general intelligence, fluid abilities, retrieval fluency abilities, processing speed, and acquired knowledge, especially verbal abilities.
- Externally-focused homeostasis constellations involve attributes such as uneven tempered and aggression that tend to socially alienate the individual and/or reduce their status or ability to function in social groups. Personality characteristics such as agreeableness subcomponents compassion and cooperation, conscientiousness-related traits, and abilities such as processing speed and verbal abilities form constellations that facilitate maintenance of the individual in social environments.
- Trait complexes for change energize internal development and adaptation to changing environmental circumstances. These trait complexes likely evolved to take advantage of opportunity-rich environments with higher reward/risk ratios.
- Generally, traits and abilities in these constellations contained fluid abilities paired with personality traits involving behavioral activation and change, as well as acquired knowledge abilities paired with plasticity traits (i.e., openness and extraversion traits), industriousness, and activity. Prominent compound personality traits associated with initiative-taking, behavioral activation, and proactivity include self esteem, locus of control, and achievement via independence fit into these complexes.
- Internally-focused change constellations were intellect aspect of openness and related personality facets and non-invested abilities such as fluid abilities, memory dimensions, and processing abilities. These traits and abilities tended to correlate positively and sizably. Relations were even larger for acquired knowledge, especially verbal knowledge.
- Externally-focused change constellations involve traits associated with exploration of and responsiveness to physical and social environmental stimuli, especially openness, as well as extraversion-related traits (e.g., activity) with non-invested and invested abilities such as processing speed and verbal abilities.
- Constellations of traits for general fitness represent individuals’ agility in effectively moving between a focus on surviving and a focus on thriving as the environment demands/provides.
- These trait complexes involve joint functioning of emotional stability associated with homeostasis, extraversion associated with change, and industriousness associated with the motivation to move between those strategies. This amalgam of personality traits is best captured by compound personality traits, including self esteem and internal locus of control. These traits display pervasive relations with a host of cognitive abilities, especially general mental ability, memory, and processing speed. The general factor of personality is also positively associated.
Chapters 4 and 5 detailed the results of our meta-analyses from the perspectives of cognitive ability and personality trait frameworks, respectively. The results led to three major conclusions. First, personality and intelligence are not independent domains of individual differences. Second, relations for more specific traits and abilities may differ from their parent Big Five factors and primary abilities. Third, there are ability-trait constellations that indicate differential cybernetic adaptations for homeostasis, change, and general fitness.
The first two conclusions were discussed previously, and this chapter is devoted to the third conclusion and to parsimoniously explaining why certain personality traits displayed sizable positive relations with cognitive abilities, others displayed sizable negative relations, and yet others displayed negligible relations. Our theory accounting for these patterns, Cybernetic Trait Complexes Theory (CTCT), was introduced in Chapter 6, and is used here as an organizing framework for describing the meta-analytic results.
CTCT outlines how personality and intelligence jointly form constellations that describe how individuals balance homeostasis and change internally and externally to pursue self-preservation and self-evolution.
Trait Constellations for Psychological Fitness: Self-Preservation and Self-Evolution Pathways
Covariation of ability and personality can be thought of as trait complexes that reflect psychological systems’ self-regulating mechanisms for setting, progressing toward, and achieving or revising goals via the coordinated use of resources. These trait complexes serve to (1) maintain psychological homeostasis to sustain stability and (2) enable change to support adaptive development and growth. These two functions can each be further bifurcated according to whether they focus internally on the individual or externally on the environment. The following subsections describe findings for each quadrant of this 2x2 matrix (see Figure 19 in Chapter 6).
“Life’s roughest storms prove the strength of our anchors.”
Homeostasis Constellations: Trait Complexes for Self-Preservation
Cognitive abilities and personality traits for psychological homeostasis serve two purposes (a) conferring internal stability and (b) maintaining the individual in changing environments (see Figure 19 in Chapter 6). Constellations for homeostasis may be of special fitness value in resource-scarce and/or threatening (e.g., high-conflict) environments. These personality traits are thrifty from the individual’s point of view. That is, these traits are best for protecting scant resources while foregoing less certain opportunities to gain more resources. Traits that confer internal psychological stability include low anxiety, low suspiciousness, low depression, as well as high self-esteem and internal locus of control. Traits that maintain the individual in the ever-changing external environment include high dependability and cautiousness, which facilitate goal prioritization. These trait complexes include abilities from both non-invested and invested abilities domains. Notable relations are depicted in Figure 20a as well as Chapter 8’s Figure 24a for neuroticism-related traits and Figure 20b as well as Chapter 8’s Figures 24c and 27a for conscientiousness-related traits. Corresponding detailed sets of results are presented in Supplementary Tables 197, 198, and 200–205, respectively in Appendix I.
The central role of low neuroticism in the homeostasis constellation is evident. The overall pattern of the neuroticism constructs’ relations with cognitive abilities is negative (e.g., see Chapter 8’s Figure 24a for non-invested abilities and Supplementary Tables 197–208 in Appendix I for detailed results). Relations between global neuroticism and acquired cognitive abilities were mostly negative and modest, though as large as -.18 (with quantitative ability as well as comprehension knowledge). Robust relations based on at least 1,000 individuals or 10 effect sizes are depicted in Figure 20a. Acquired knowledge dimensions were negatively and typically more strongly related to neuroticism’s facets than non-invested abilities, though the most consistent findings were for verbal abilities. These sizable, negative relations indicate that individuals who have uneven tempers or are suspicious do not tend to invest their abilities in the verbal domain.1 Alternatively, these results could indicate that individuals who score higher on verbal abilities are better able to manage their neurotic tendencies, especially when it comes to displaying suspiciousness or being uneven tempered, which could be a particularly useful characteristic adaption in higher-threat environments.
Figure 20. Personality-ability relations for homeostasis. 20a. Neuroticism-related traits’ relations with invested abilities. 20b. Conscientiousness-related traits’ relations with processing speed abilities. 20c. Agreeableness-related traits’ relations with processing speed abilities and verbal abilities. Y-axes indicate p̂ values.
Homeostasis Constellations for Internal Stability: Internal Self-Maintenance
Internal stability is fundamental to homeostasis, and neuroticism is the trait that best indexes internal instability of affect. Neuroticism encompasses both the experience of discrete emotions and more enduring moods. Neuroticism traits are mostly involved in trait complexes associated with lower capacity to deal with complexity, indicating that heightened vigilance to and avoidance of threats corresponds to reduced mental resources. Figures 20a and 26a depict findings for neuroticism traits (see Supplementary Tables 197, 198, and 200–205 in Appendix I for complete technical results). As shown in Figure 24a, general mental ability appears to be lower among individuals who are uneven tempered (p̂ = -.29), depressed (p̂ = -.18), suspicious (p̂ = -.17), and, unsurprisingly, test anxious (p̂ = -.20).
Neuroticism’s negative associations are not confined to general mental ability. Neuroticism-related traits display widespread, negative relations with multiple specific, non-acquired ability dimensions. For example, the fluid abilities induction and quantitative reasoning are both negatively related to several neuroticism facets. Retrieval fluency abilities are also negatively correlated with neuroticism facets uneven tempered and depression. Originality and creativity ability has a substantial, negative correlation with the uneven tempered facet of neuroticism (p̂ = -.25). Naming facility and speed of lexical access, free recall memory, ideational fluency, and word fluency correlate negatively with neuroticism’s depression facet (p̂ = -.22, -.17, -.13, and -.10, respectively). Finally, processing speed abilities are also negatively related to the uneven tempered, suspiciousness, depression, and anxiety facets of neuroticism.
When the environment is unsupportive (e.g., resource-scarce), trait complexes that correspond to low energy usage may be adaptive. Within neuroticism traits, depression represents extreme energy conservation.2 As shown in Figure 24a, its strongest relations are with energy-intensive cognitive abilities like the fluid ability sub-dimension quantitative reasoning (p̂ = -.25) and visual processing ability (p̂ = -.32). See Supplementary Tables 197 and 201–205 in Appendix I for complete technical results.
Invested abilities showed even stronger negative relations with neuroticism facets. The most consistent findings are for acquired verbal abilities. For example, correlations of neuroticism’s uneven tempered facet with verbal abilities ranged between -.25 and -.33 (e.g., general verbal information, reading comprehension, lexical knowledge). Similarly, suspiciousness’ relations with specific verbal abilities ranged between -.21 and -.28. See Figure 20a as well as Supplementary Tables S197, 204, and 205 in Appendix I for complete technical results.
Homeostasis Constellations for External Stability: Self-Preservation in the Environment
Humans are a social species, and the social world constitutes a core environment for individuals. Prosocial personality traits and abilities help to maintain individuals in social environments (see Figures 20a and 20c for relevant personality-ability trait complexes; the corresponding set of detailed results may be found in Supplementary Tables 197, 198, and 200–205 as well as 210, 214, and 215, respectively, in Appendix I). Attributes such as aggression tend to detract from maintenance of self in one’s social groups. In contrast, personality characteristics such as agreeableness subcomponents compassion and cooperation, conscientiousness-related traits, and abilities such as processing speed and verbal abilities facilitate maintenance of the individual in the social environment.
For example, agreeableness’ compassion aspect entails willingness to expend energy on others, including non-kin. Such investments of energy are helpful in maintaining external homeostasis because they demonstrate contribution to a group and weave a social safety net for the individual. In contrast, agreeableness’ politeness aspect is more focused on facilitating transactional interactions using socially prescribed rules for conduct. Compassion demonstrates sizable, positive relations with a range of abilities (e.g., .26 with general mental ability, .21 with memory span, and numerous acquired knowledge dimensions; see Figures 24c, 27b, and 20c). Relations with perceptual speed abilities are also sizable (e.g., .19 and .17 with perceptual speed and number facility, respectively, as depicted in Figure 20c). In addition, compassion also relates positively with verbal abilities (e.g., .32 with spelling ability and .31 with language development). In stark contrast, politeness’ relations with ability constructs are mostly negative or smaller in magnitude (see Chapter 8’s Figure 27b for examples and Supplementary Tables 210 and 211 in Appendix I for detailed set of results).
Conscientiousness aspects and facets generally relate positively and substantially to processing speed. Figure 20b illustrates positive relations with processing speed abilities (e.g., perceptual speed correlated with industriousness [p̂ = .17], persistence [p̂ = .15], and order [p̂ = .20]; scanning with industriousness [p̂ = .15] and order [p̂ = .18]; and number facility with orderliness [p̂ = .13] and order [p̂ = .19] as well as global conscientiousness [p̂ = .25]). A proclivity toward structure, self-discipline, and tenacity appears to assist in the development of processing abilities. Alternatively, processing speed abilities may provide individuals with the structured mental adaptations for self-discipline and persistence.3
“Hoist your sail when the wind is fair.”
Change Constellations: Trait Complexes for Self-Evolution
Traits and abilities for change enable the individual to thrive by energizing (a) adaptation to changing environmental circumstances, or (b) advancement toward greater levels of inner development, and potentially, diversification (see Figure 19 in Chapter 6). Constellations for change may have greater fitness value in opportunity-rich environments where the reward/risk ratio is higher. These trait complexes are indicative of high-energy settings that require more resources (e.g., calories) and are advantageous in environments where such expenditures of energy are more likely to yield rewards. From the abilities domain, fluid abilities and visual processing support the initiation of adaptations as well as development and growth. Acquired knowledge’s role in constellations for change can be interpreted as an intellectual outcome of change as well as a cognitive input for further development.
From the personality domain, constellations for change include personality traits involving behavioral activation and change, including industriousness as well as activity and other plasticity traits. Prominent compound personality traits associated with behavioral activation, initiative-taking, and proactivity include self esteem, locus of control, and achievement via independence. They each draw variance from low neuroticism, high conscientiousness, and high extraversion (as well as high openness, for the trait of achievement via independence) (Stanek & Ones, 2018).
Figure 21a depicts the main non-invested ability correlates of these personality traits, especially positive relations with fluid abilities and visual processing abilities. See Supplementary Tables 206, 208, and 238 in Appendix I for complete results. Fluid abilities, particularly induction and quantitative reasoning, have notable, positive correlations. For example, relations with induction were .24 for achievement via independence, .20 for locus of control, and .13 for self esteem. The same cluster of personality traits displayed positive relations with visual processing abilities (e.g., all visual processing abilities and achievement via independence [mean4 p̂ = .22 regardless of N or K], spatial scanning with locus of control [p̂ = .16], and visualization with self esteem [p̂ = .12]).
Other prominent personality traits associated with behavioral activation and proactivity include plasticity, industriousness, and activity. Although these traits display small relations with fluid and visual abilities, they are more strongly associated with knowledge acquisition (see Figure 21b; detailed set of results are presented in Supplementary Tables 225, 244, and 275 in Appendix I). For example, the higher order personality trait of plasticity, representing the shared variance between extraversion and openness, is associated with a variety of invested abilities (e.g., mathematics achievement [p̂ = .32], verbal ability [p̂ = .28], lexical knowledge [p̂ = .21], mechanical knowledge [p̂ = .25], natural sciences knowledge [p̂ = .32], and social studies knowledge [p̂ = .43]). Industriousness is also positively associated with acquired knowledge abilities. For example, it correlated with quantitative abilities (p̂ = .23 to .34), verbal abilities (p̂ = .26 to .34), and domain specific knowledge abilities (p̂ = .16 to .34).5 These results underscore that effortful control and goal prioritization are necessary for knowledge acquisition.
Further energizing goal prioritization and active engagement in self-evolution, the activity facet of extraversion also displays uniform, positive correlations (p̂ = .17 to .28) with acquired knowledge constructs (see Supplementary Table 244 in Appendix I). Sizable, positive relations with several long term memory retrieval fluency abilities indicative of ideation and creativity (e.g., ideational fluency [p̂ = .25], originality and creativity [p̂ = .20]) further attest to activity’s diverse roles in self-evolution.
Figure 21. Personality-ability relations for change. 21a. Behavioral activation traits and non-invested abilities. 21b. Plasticity, industriousness, and activity with invested abilities. Y-axes indicate p̂ values.
Change Constellations for Internal Development and Growth: Internal Self-Evolution
Internally-driven growth is largely the result of intellectual exploration and rational reflection. Openness’ intellect aspect is the tendency to seek and engage with abstract concepts, and it is the cardinal personality trait associated with development and growth. Therefore, it is not surprising that openness’ intellect aspect correlates with both non-invested abilities and invested abilities (i.e., acquired knowledge). Personality-ability trait complexes for individual development and growth are depicted in Figure 22a (see Supplementary Tables 258–261 in Appendix I for complete technical results).
Figure 22a summarizes how intellect and related personality facets correlate positively and sizably with non-invested abilities such as fluid abilities, memory dimensions, and both spatial and perceptual processing abilities. Specifically, induction has a mean meta-analytic correlation of .17 with openness’ intellect aspect and its aligned facets. The corresponding mean meta-analytic correlations for general sequential reasoning and quantitative reasoning are .21 and .19, respectively. See Supplementary Tables 258–261 in Appendix I for complete technical results.
Relations with acquired knowledge abilities are of even larger magnitude. For example, openness’ ideas facet displayed relations between .30 to .50. The typical effect for intellect-related traits is more pronounced for verbal abilities than for quantitative abilities. For example, the mean meta-analytic correlation of intellect with acquired verbal abilities is .21, whereas the mean meta-analytic correlation with acquired quantitative abilities is .16. These results suggest that, compared to quantitative abilities, verbal abilities are more strongly linked with the rational self-reflection and intellectual investment that drive personal growth.
Change Constellations for External Development and Growth: External Self-Evolution
Personality-ability trait complexes for individual development and growth are depicted in Figure 22. Complete, detailed results are provided in Supplementary Tables 241, 243, 244, 246, 249, and 257–264 in Appendix I.
Externally-driven adaptation generally involves exploration of and responsiveness to physical and social environmental stimuli. Associated trait constellations draw from cognitive engagement, social navigation, and behavioral exploration. Specifically, the intellect and experiencing aspects of openness, as well as extraversion, have notable roles in initiating adaptation to ever-changing environments and thus spurring development and growth.
Figure 22. Personality-ability relations for individual development and growth. 22a. Intellect-related traits’ relations with non-invested and invested abilities. 22b. Experiencing-related traits’ relations with non-invested and invested abilities. 22c. Extraversion-related traits’ relations with non-invested and invested abilities. Asterisk indicates that meta-analytic correlation was larger in magnitude but truncated for visualisation purposes. Precise results shown in supplementary tables in Appendix I. Y-axes indicate p̂ values.
From the openness domain, intellect-related traits’ relations with fluid and visuo-spatial abilities as well as long term storage and retrieval and short term memory abilities are sizable (see Figure 22a). Personality tendencies to seek cognitively engaging stimuli as well as to interpret stimuli and situations through reasoning and deductive logic appear to be positively and meaningfully associated with fluid (e.g., inductive), visuo-spatial, and memory abilities as well as general mental ability. Through the prism of CTCT, positive and substantial relations between intellect-related traits and these abilities reflect a trait complex that energizes the organism to change by detecting external signals that change is needed and activating mechanisms to prospect for what actions to take. The complex of intellect-related traits and fluid, visuo-spatial, and memory abilities may further be viewed as a “cerebral constellation” that approaches the world as a puzzle to be studied, patterns to be recognized, and problems to be solved in the mind. See Supplementary Tables 241, 243–244, 246, 249, and 257–264 in Appendix I for complete technical results.
In contrast, experiencing and its related facets have more muted relations than intellect-related traits (see Figure 22b). This is true for most non-invested abilities such as fluid, memory, and visual processing abilities. For example, in the visuo-spatial abilities domain, visualization correlates .20 with intellect but only .02 with experiencing, .24 with the ideas facet but .00 with introspection, and .21 with curiosity but -.09 with aesthetics. The same pattern is also evident for closure speed and flexibility of closure. With invested abilities, the same pattern arises. For example, lexical knowledge correlates positively and sizably with intellect facets ideas, curiosity, need for cognition (p̂ = .40, .25, and .24, respectively) but at substantially lower levels with experiencing facets of introspection, fantasy, and aesthetics (p̂ = .13, .11, and .07, respectively).
Extraversion traits also have marked associations with processing speed, retrieval fluency, and acquired verbal abilities (see Figure 22c). The relations represent trait complexes for engagement with the external, especially social, environment.
Accordingly, sociability and activity are positively linked to processing speed abilities. Sociability relates positively and substantially to perceptual speed (p̂ = .18), scanning (p̂ = .14), and number facility (p̂ = .17). Similar relations are observed with the extraversion trait of activity (.15 for perceptual speed, .13 for scanning, and .16 for number facility). The compound trait of ambition, which also involves extraversion, correlates .66 with scanning and .25 with number facility.
Relatedly, retrieval fluency abilities (from the non-invested abilities domain) are positively related to global extraversion, particularly its aspects and dominance facet. Retrieval fluency and its components all have positive though modest relations with extraversion, enthusiasm, assertiveness, and dominance (mean p̂ = .11, .14, .13, and .12, respectively). The psychological meaning of this complex of associated traits and abilities is activation for change and ideation of behavioral options to develop and progress toward goals (e.g., identifying that a goal pursuit strategy is not working and fluently ideating alternatives).
Among invested abilities (i.e., acquired knowledge constructs), verbal abilities are positively related to the activity and sociability facets of extraversion. Relations with activity were mostly in the .20s (e.g., .28 with general verbal information, .24 with lexical knowledge, .23 with reading comprehension, .20 with native language usage). Relations with sociability were in the .14 to .22 range, except for lexical knowledge (p̂ = .08). Psychologically, this complex of associated traits and abilities is interpreted as sensitivity to environmental cues that signal the need for behavioral change (e.g., recognizing previously learned patterns in group communication to know that a strategy for pursuing one’s goals is becoming more/less appropriate).
General Fitness Constellations: Trait Complexes for Balancing Self-Preservation and Self-Evolution
According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. (Megginson, 1963, p.91)
General fitness represents individuals’ agility in effectively moving between a focus on surviving and a focus on thriving as the environment demands/provides. From a cybernetic perspective, fitness involves directing resources to self-preservation or self-evolution based on the ecology of the internal and external environment. Multiple trait complexes have equifinality for general fitness. These trait constellations reflect joint functioning of emotional stability associated with homeostasis, extraversion associated with change, and industriousness associated with the motivation to prioritize goals and move between homeostasis/change strategies.
This amalgam of personality traits is best captured by compound personality traits (Hough & Ones, 2001) like self esteem and internal locus of control. Such traits display pervasive relations with a host of cognitive abilities, especially general mental ability but also dimensions of memory and processing speed. Figure 23 depicts personality-ability relations for general fitness. See Supplementary Tables 206, 208, 259–261, and 273 in Appendix I for complete results. For example, self esteem correlates with non-invested abilities of originality and creativity (p̂ = .22), visual processing (p̂ = .18), perceptual speed (p̂ = .15), and quantitative reasoning (p̂ = .14) as well as invested verbal ability (p̂ = .25). Similarly, internal locus of control correlates with non-invested abilities of fluid (p̂ = .24), associational fluency (p̂ = .14), and perceptual speed (p̂ = .12) as well as invested quantitative ability (p̂ = .35).
Conspicuously, general mental ability is the central ability for general fitness. This role fits with Stern’s (1914) assertion that general mental ability reflects “mental adaptability to new problems and conditions of life.” Associations with self esteem and internal locus of control (p̂ = .25 and .23, respectively)6 also fit well in this frame. The agility to effectively move between self-preservation and self-evolution according to the context relies on both general mental ability as well as the self-regard and certitude of self-esteem and internal locus of control.
General mental ability’s relations with openness’ intellect aspect and associated facets (i.e., need for cognition, ideas, and curiosity) also denote a general fitness trait cluster (e.g., correlations in the .17 to .40 range). These relations signify the importance of intellectual openness in shifting strategies between homeostasis and change. In addition, general mental ability correlates .32 with industriousness, highlighting the essential role of motivation in pursuing effective fitness strategies.
Finally, general fitness is epitomized by the relation between general mental ability and the general factor of personality (p̂ = .36). Individuals who evaluate themselves positively and have high self-regard (i.e., score high on the general factor of personality) also have higher general mental ability and vice versa. The broader results indicate that general mental ability and traits of self esteem, internal locus of control, intellect, and openness, as well as general factor of personality, may be hallmarks of general cybernetic effectiveness (i.e., individual differences for effectively surviving and thriving).
Distillation of Our Theoretical Account of the Quantitative Results
In this chapter, we presented findings from our extensive meta-analyses of personality-ability relations using CTCT as an organizing scheme. CTCT recognizes that many personality traits and cognitive abilities covary. The meta-analytic findings make this abundantly clear (see Figures 25 and 26 in Chapter 8). Depending on their self-preservation, self-evolution, and general fitness functions, personality-ability relations can vary at different levels of the ability and personality trait hierarchies.
Homeostasis constellations support internal stability and maintain the individual in the environment. Neuroticism and its facets’ negative associations with general intelligence, fluid abilities, retrieval fluency abilities, processing speed, and acquired knowledge, especially verbal abilities constitute internally-focused homeostasis constellations.
Social environments are some of the most important to human life. Maintaining individuals in social environments relies on other clusters of interrelated traits and abilities. These externally-focused homeostasis constellations include agreeableness subcomponents compassion and cooperation, conscientiousness-related traits, and abilities such as processing speed and verbal abilities.
Trait clusters energizing change, development, and adaptation involve fluid abilities paired with plasticity and behavioral activation traits. One internally-focused change trait complex involves openness’ intellect aspect and fluid abilities, memory dimensions, and processing abilities. One externally-focused change constellation involves extraversion’s activity facet and non-invested processing speed and retrieval fluency abilities.
General fitness constellations indicate individuals’ agility in effectively moving between a focus on surviving and a focus on thriving as the environment demands/provides. Unsurprisingly, the relations of general mental ability and high self-regard (e.g., high self esteem, general factor of personality) provide prime examples of this trait complex.
Ultimately, personality and ability relations are not random and haphazard, but instead are tailored to different cybernetic strategies and goals.
Figure 23. Personality-ability relations for general fitness. Y-axis indicates p̂ values.
Note. Not all sizable relations with acquired knowledge constructs are shown due to space limitations.
References
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Stanek, K. C., & Ones, D. S. (2018). Taxonomies and compendia of cognitive ability and personality constructs and measures relevant to industrial, work and organizational psychology. In D. S. Ones, C. Anderson, C. Viswesvaran, & H. K. Sinangil (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of industrial, work & organizational psychology: Personnel psychology and employee performance (pp. 366–407). Sage.
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Endnotes
1 Perhaps because non-invested abilities are instead invested in maintaining behaviors that regulate suspicion and uneven temper.
2 Symptoms of depression often include low interest in activities, lack of energy, slowed thinking, and reduced appetite.
3 One subset of conscientiousness traits concerning orderliness appears to function differently, potentially detracting from intellectual engagement. Negative relations with fluid cognitive abilities (e.g., specific ability relations ranged from -.09 to -.17 for orderliness) suggest a compensatory mechanism to maintain homeostasis. Imposing structure on one’s environment may detract from intellectual engagement and be interpreted as a failure to use self-regulation to focus on higher-priority goal pursuit (e.g., compulsion may drive a person to clean their desk before working on a more important task). However, this may serve an adaptive purpose of psychological self-preservation by gaining control over some part of the environment. Order and orderliness’ unsurprising, positive correlation with other non-invested abilities involving structured processing (e.g., specific processing speed abilities with the more concentrated order facet ranged from .18 to .20; see Figure 20b), also suggest a homeostatic psychological function for orderliness and similar traits. Alternatively, higher-ability individuals may not need the structure added by orderliness-related traits to see patterns and self-maintain, as suggested by the compensation hypothesis (Moutafi et al., 2004, cf. Murray et al., 2014). See tables S220–S227 for complete technical results.
4 Throughout this book, the mean p̂ metric provides the average of meta-analytic correlations across a set of meta-analytic findings described in the same sentence (e.g., achievement via independence’s relations with visual processing abilities in this example). Such unit-weighted means characterize trends in the meta-analyses and avoid giving undue weight to heavily-studied constructs.
5 One exception to this pattern was general science knowledge (p̂ = -.17).
6 It is worth stressing that neither of these compound personality traits significantly involve openness.