Openness to Experience, Intellect, and Cognitive Ability

Abstract

An instrument designed to separate 2 midlevel traits within each of the Big Five (the Big Five Aspect Scales [BFAS]) was used to clarify the relation of personality to cognitive ability. The BFAS measures Openness to Experience and Intellect as separate (although related) traits, and refers to the broader Big Five trait as Openness/Intellect. In 2 samples (N = 125 and 189), Intellect was independently associated with general intelligence (g) and with verbal and nonverbal intelligence about equally. Openness was independently associated only with verbal intelligence. Implications of these findings are discussed for the empirical and conceptual relations of intelligence to personality and for the mechanisms potentially underlying both Openness/Intellect and cognitive ability.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (F32 MH077382) to Colin G. DeYoung, from the National Science Foundation (DRL 0644131) to Jeremy R. Gray, and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to Jordan B. Peterson.

Jeremy R. Gray is now at Michigan State University.

Notes

Note that, in the NEO PI–R, the Openness/Intellect domain is labeled Openness to Experience, despite the fact that it contains a facet measuring Intellect rather than Openness according to a previous factor analysis (DeYoung et al., 2007). In this article, we distinguish between Openness and Intellect facets of the NEO PI–R based on that factor analysis, rather than labeling them all as facets of Openness to Experience.

None of these were students at Yale University; Yale students were excluded to avoid skewing the distribution of intelligence scores in the sample. Importantly, this exclusion did not lead to a truncated upper range of intelligence; estimated IQ in the sample without Yale students ranged from 92 to 144. If 48 additional Yale students were included in the sample, effect sizes were slightly attenuated, but results remained substantively the same. The most notable difference in results was that, in regression, Openness only marginally predicted verbal intelligence, β =.12, p =.08. However, if status as a Yale student was entered as an additional covariate (dummy coded), Openness significantly predicted verbal intelligence at a comparable level to that reported here, β =.19, p <.01.