| After a century of psychometric testing (Binet, 1903), the prediction of future achievement still remains a relatively unaddressed issue. In applied settings, workers in organizations and academic institutions are uncertain about the choice of robust instruments to maximize the prediction of success and failure. At a theoretical level, differential psychologists, historically divided by different methods of research, have made isolated progress in personality and intelligence research, yet only a few have attempted to conceptualize a comprehensive, integrative model to explain cognitive and noncognitive individual differences underlying human performance (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2004).
This volume provides an extensive review of the literature on personality and intelligence research (in the past 100 years), looking not only at the independent theoretical and empirical developments of both constructs, but also their interactions—namely, the psychometric interface between personality traits and cognitive ability measures. Nevertheless, it is argued that this interface (which has been increasingly examined by differential psychologists during the last 5 years) represents only one level of integration between cognitive and noncognitive traits. Two other important perspectives are the focus on academic performance (the criterion, par excellence, for the validation of ability measures) and self-assessed or subjective assessed ability. Hence the title of this book, which deals with the relationship between personality and intellectual competence—a term we chose to encompass the three different aspects of psychometric intelligence (cognitive ability tests), academic performance, and selfassessed ability—although it should be noted that other constructs (e.g., leadership, creativity, art judgment) may also be considered indicators of intellectual competence. |