Personality and Intelligence

Intelligence as a Part of Personality

Kant separated the mind into three components: cognition, conation, and affect. Some personality theorists, such as Raymond Cattell, have suggested, however, that intelligence refers to a stable mode of functioning and should be included within the concept of personality. Based on a lexical approach according to which all human behavior is represented in language and more specifically in each language's adjectives, Cattell identified 16 primary factors of personality with 1 referring specifically to intelligence: contrasting lower general mental capacity and inability to handle abstract problems with abstract thinking, higher general mental capacity, and fast learning. In this perspective, intelligence and specifically fluid intelligence may be considered part of personality.

In a similar approach, George Welsh introduced intelligence as a personality dimension, intellectance, related to performance on intellectual measures. Intellectance refers to the level of investment in intellectual activities: the more an individual is invested and interested in a cognitive task, the more he or she could perform well and show intelligence in this task. Thus intellectance may be described as an intellectual ability trait that allows individuals to achieve their objective.

In this conception of intellectual ability as a trait, the psychological variable of prudence, referring to concerned choice, and action planning as the basis of balancing between personal interests and social concerns, has been proposed. This concept may partially relate to the notion of “wisdom,” involving both personality and intelligence in the extent to which people use their intelligence for a social good.

More recently, John Mayer proposed that stable behavior, defined as a personality trait, inherently involves cognitive and affective features. For example, the trait of extraversion combines positive affect (an emotional mechanism), social affiliation (a motivational mechanism), and knowledge of how to socialize (a mental model concerning intelligence).

The concept of emotional intelligence, defined as a set of abilities to treat emotion and/or emotional information, has been developed. Two kinds of emotional intelligence models exist: One is a maximum-performance-based model, an ability-based approach, and the other is a trait-based model. Emotional intelligence measures range from performance-based tests to those that capture individuals' self-perception of their emotional intelligence. In this way, emotional intelligence may be defined as a tendency to deal adequately with emotions.

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