The Surprising Relationship Between Personality and Intelligence
The personality traits that correlate with cognitive ability are not what you'd expect
As I’ve written extensively everywhere, I’m an anxious person. For years, I thought my high levels of the personality trait neuroticism at least had a hidden upside: I thought it must at least make me smart. After all, neurotic people are always (over)thinking … I figured we must at least be thinking up something good! All my brooding walks and anxious googling must be generating some profound insights, too, right? Right?
Not so, according to a massive new meta-analysis of personality and cognitive ability recently published by two researchers at the University of Minnesota, Kevin Stanek and Deniz Ones. Ones and Stanek analyzed 1,300 studies that together included over 2 million participants from 50 countries, and they looked at both what they call “invested” and “uninvested” abilities: Uninvested abilities include how fast you can reason, visualize, read, perceive patterns, and do basic math. In other words, they’re abilities that don’t require knowledge, per se, but help you acquire knowledge. And invested abilities are basically the knowledge you acquire: Vocabulary, familiarity with the sciences and humanities, or foreign-language skills.
In reading their study, several of the relationships between personality and cognitive ability were not at all what I’d expect them to be:
Neuroticism, the trait that is associated with depression and anxiety, is negatively correlated with cognitive ability, both the invested and uninvested kind. This seems to be because moody people might find it hard to concentrate or focus. They dwell on their worries, rather than whatever’s in front of them. “Anxiety and all sorts of neuroticism traits tend to steal from the energy of the person,” Ones told me. Instead of focusing on the memo they should be writing, neurotic people are googling whether the bump on their finger is cancer. (It’s never cancer.)
A facet of extroversion called “activity”—describing people who are energetic, enthusiastic, and generally enjoy being busy—was associated positively with both invested and uninvested abilities. That’s right—those irritating extroverts who just love to make small talk are actually pretty smart. This “is in stark contrast to the popular stereotype of intellectuals closeted away in their rooms,” reads one particularly droll line of the study’s summary. Extroversion gets a bad rap, but as Ones explained, it implies you’re someone who has positive emotions and likes to do things. You’re not just sociable, you’re always up to something. Juggling all those activities requires memory, visualization, and decision-making—in other words, cognitive abilities.
Compassion, a facet of agreeableness, is positively related to invested abilities—the knowledge and facts that we soak up over the years. This surprised me because I share the common view that nice people are lovely to be around, but not necessarily brilliant. (I once told my therapist that I wanted a friend who was like a Sunday-school teacher with a PhD from Harvard, and she pointed out that this combination does not occur frequently in nature.) It could be that compassionate people have more emotional intelligence—and that this translates to real intelligence. Ones said compassion might lead to the development of certain abilities—like being present in the moment, analyzing nonverbal cues, and pattern recognition—that rely on memory and processing speed. And connecting with others requires good language skills, which are a type of vested ability. (The reverse relationship could also be true: Better cognitive abilities give you the skills to understand how others think and feel.)
Of course, the study had some intuitive findings, too. Openness to experience, a trait that vaguely measures creativity, was positively related to cognitive abilities. This is an established finding: Openness is correlated with IQ and years of education, to the point where it was previously called “openness/intellect.” But the newer way of defining the open personality is as someone who entertains novel and challenging ideas, regardless of how much formal schooling they have. In fact, openness’ association with intelligence might simply stem from the fact that open people like to read and learn.
And the “industriousness” element of conscientiousness—how hardworking you are—was associated with lots of different cognitive abilities. So there’s still something to be said for grinding away at your work, however dumb you may feel while you do it.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Ones a question about my pet cause: Does all of this mean that if you change your personality, you can actually get … smarter? After all, these links between personality and intelligence are correlations, not causations. But, it’s very tantalizing to hope for causation!
“My intuitive inference is that if you were to improve neuroticism, it would result in better cognitive performance,” she told me.
Still no massive meta-analysis on how to banish neuroticism entirely. But here are some ideas.
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Further update:
I’m back at work at the Atlantic, and here are some of my recent stories:
Neurotic me now ruminating over how much my neuroticism has cost me in cognitive performance for almost four decades.
Have you taken an IQ test? I did one as part of a "neuropsychological assessment," and I have to say that I am highly skeptical that this type of test measures anything meaningful. It's a bunch of puzzles and absurd tests of memory that, yes, are very difficult to complete if you are anxious. But what does the ability to remember a long string of one-syllable words while being put on the spot really tell us about cognitive ability? Or the ability to complete random puzzles and visual patterns? How does this relate to critical thinking? Probably not at all, in my opinion. I think it probably says little other than how comfortable and skilled you are at games and puzzles.