Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence

Product Information

By contrast, the use of standardised tests in occupational selection procedures has been common in Britain since the 1980s. Peter Saville’s Occupational Personality Questionnaire was notable as an instrument developed specifically for the organisational context. In the early 1990s, the British Psychological Society began to study standards for applied psychology, a broad remit that led eventually to the current BPS Committee on Test Standards. A new growth area for testing is the measurement of subjective well-being in Britain, the subject of a recent working paper from the Office of National Statistics. Johnson, W. & Bouchard, T.J. (2005). The structure of human intelligence. Intelligence, 33, 393–416.

McClure, E. B. (2000). A meta-analytic review of sex differences in facial expression processing and their development in infants, children, and adolescents. Psychological Bulletin, 126(3), 424–453.Terman, L. M., & Oden, M. H. (1959). Genetic studies of genius: The gifted group at mid-life (Vol. 5). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. This is evidence by research on individuals, in the United States, laypersons rated intelligence as the presence of the following: practical problem-solving (this is the ability to solve everyday problems), verbal ability (the ability to confidently communicate, this meaning one can solve the problem and successfully communicate the solution both confidently and clearly), social competence (this would involve the person being able to confidently socialist – so people having social skills is considered intelligent behaviour). These are the major requirements to be considered intelligence.

Halpern, D. F., Benbow, C. P., Geary, D. C., Gur, R. C., Hyde, J. S., & Gernsbache, M. A. (2007). The science of sex differences in science and mathematics. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 8(1), 1–51. Luciano, M., Hansell, N., Lahti, J. et al. (2011). Whole genome association scan for genetic polymorphisms influencing information processing speed. Biological Psychology, 86, 193–202. Today, investigation into intelligence from the point of view of psychology has returned to its practical roots. Like Binet, whose first aim was to help identify children requiring special education, intelligence theory and research are being applied in a number of contexts today, whether in terms of cognitive decline, promoting health, academic achievement or how to successfully promote oneself intra- or interpersonally. An outstanding work that in my opinion succeeds in being both a first class textbook for courses in Individual Differences and a fascinating read."

Fig. 1 The Big 5 describes our different personalities. Measurement of Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities Voyer, D., Voyer, S., & Bryden, M. P. (1995). Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. Psychological Bulletin, 117(2), 250–270.

One of the most controversial and divisive areas of research in psychology has been to look for evidence of racial differences in intelligence (e.g., Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002; 2006). As you might imagine, this endeavour is fraught with methodological and theoretical minefields. Firstly, the concept of race as a biological category is problematic. Things like skin colour and facial features might define social or cultural conceptions of race but are biologically not very meaningful (Chou, 2017; Yudell, 2014). Secondly, intelligence interacts with a host of factors such as socioeconomic status and health; factors that are also related to race. Thirdly, intelligence tests themselves may be worded or administered in ways that favour the experiences of some groups, thus maximizing their scores, while failing to represent the experiences of other groups, thus lowering their scores. Deary, I.J., Weiss, A. & Batty, G.D. (2010). Intelligence and personality as predictors of illness and death. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 11, 53–79. Lubinski, D., & Benbow, C. P. (2006). Study of mathematically precocious youth after 35 years: Uncovering antecedents for the development of math-science expertise. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(4), 316–345. Chamorro-Premuzic, T. & Arteche, A. (2008). Intellectual competence and academic performance. Intelligence, 36, 564–573. One of the major proponents of the importance of processing speed for higher cognitive abilities has been Salthouse (1996), who offered two reasons why speed should be so important. First, if you are slow to process information, and you cannot control the rate at which it is presented, then you are likely to miss information, some of which may be needed for the behavior in which you are engaged. Second, coordination between two different tasks is likely to be impaired if you are slow, because you may take so long on one task that you forget information that is needed to perform the other task.Intelligence is arguably psychology’s best-attested and most important variable. Britain has made notable contributions to intelligence since the late 19th century (Deary, 2001), and researchers continue to apply the principles and theories in areas of vital importance to society. Vogel, G. (1996). School achievement: Asia and Europe top in world, but reasons are hard to find. Science, 274(5291), 1296. The book also includes separate chapters on Academic Argument, Statistical Analysis, Psychometric Testing and ethics to provide a framework for the academic and technical terms that are used commonly in the field. We welcome submissions that examine basic research questions (e.g., associations between intelligence and non-cognitive constructs) and applied research questions (e.g., testing and comparing the predictive power of cognitive and non-variables on external indicators such as school grades or indicators of health). Additionally, we particularly invite submissions that extend the unit of analysis from individuals to dyads or groups. This might include research into the interpersonal perception of intelligence (e.g., accuracy and biases) and/or the role of cognitive abilities in social relationships (e.g., in couples or among workers). In line with the Journal of Intelligence’s scope, we also welcome review articles, theoretical contributions, meta-analyses, and commentaries (see Aims and Scope for an overview).