Maciej Stolarskia, , , Marcin Zajenkowskia, Gerhard Meisenbergb
Abstract
The relationships between national personality traits and intelligence from 51 countries were examined. It was found that extraversion, openness to experience and agreeableness measured at the national level were significantly and positively correlated with national IQs; however, in the regression model only the former two were marginally significant. For openness but not extraversion, this corresponds to observations made at the individual level. It was also shown that, taken together, Big Five traits and IQs of various cultures statistically explained 70% of a nation's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The most important predictors of economic success were intelligence and extraversion, which proved to be strongly positively related to GDP. Agreeableness and openness to experience, although significantly correlated with GDP, did not statistically explain any additional variance of GDP over and above IQ and extraversion. The question about causality concerning differential variables and a nation's wealth is discussed. The results provide new insights into relationships between personality and intelligence at the country level. However, uncertainty remains about the validity of country-level personality measures.
Highlights
► Extraversion, openness and agreeableness are correlated with IQ at the national level. ► Big Five traits and IQs of countries explained 70% of per capita GDP. ► National IQ and extraversion are the most powerful predictors of national economy.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
National intelligence and personality
National intelligence and personality: Their relationships and impact on national economic success
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Extroverts usually make for the best value transferers - as opposed to the mostly introvert value creators who care less about status and more about abstract stuff like truth. I suppose that each society has some kind of hawk-dove dichotomy between extroverts and introverts. It is evolutionarily advantageous to be an extrovert in an introvert society (because you can leech more for yourself). An extrovert society, however, there is very little status and wealth to extract, so it would be best to be an introvert. So those personality traits should in equilibrium in each society, but the environment determines where that equilibrium point actually is.
ReplyDeleteIt seems doubtful to me that extraversion is truly correlated with national IQ (one would expect the reverse – move from Northern Europe to sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate this). In general it seems applying personality tests across cultures is suspect, because individuals in other groups may estimate their own characteristics in comparison to other individuals in their group, which may get lost in the translation, so to speak, with between group comparisons.
ReplyDeleteDoes "extraversion" (isn't that somewhat difficult to define?) correlate with risk-taking and/or entrepreneurship? I would imagine so.
ReplyDeleteThe construct Extraversion relates to positive mood and a generally amplified sense of reward from any activity (but particularly social activity).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.apa.org/monitor/dec00/extravert.aspx
"Extraverts find social situations more rewarding than introverts, not because they are more sociable, but because they are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most situations, finds a recent study.
Arguing that sociability is a narrower construct than extraversion and not the core of the trait, the researchers conducted three studies on a total of 743 U.S. college students to test how extraversion and reward sensitivity are linked. They created a Social Interaction Scale to assess whether people base their enjoyment of situations primarily on the extent to which the situations provide opportunities for social interaction. The study also examined three other facets of extraversion: affiliation, defined as enjoying and valuing close interpersonal bonds; ascendance, which reflects enjoying leadership roles and assertiveness; and venturesome, the degree to which individuals seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations.
The researchers found that, although sociability--individual differences in enjoying social activities and preferring being with others over being alone--is an important part of extraversion, it may actually be a by-product of reward sensitivity rather than a core feature of extraversion.
The authors also point to prior research that shows extraverts tend to feel more pleasant affect even when they are alone."
Autistic type personality traits are more to do with finding truth and reason and things and so on more rewarding than people, while introversion vs extraversion is about reward versus effort (extraverts have more motivation in social and other economic situations as they get more psychological reward from it).
I am not sure if this leads extraverts to behave in a more unethical fashion - it seems doubtful to me overall.
If the incentive structure is fucked though - extraversion = reward sensitivity would seem likely to lead to extraverts performing unethical behaviour to get more reward.
I wonder why this doesn't hold on the individual level for extraversion. The MBTI extraversion, which is less about positive affect, seems to be inversely linked to IQ. I guess a high GDP could boost positive emotions and in turn Big Five extraversion.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it seems like a rather weak connection, leaving room for financially successful and introverted nations like Japan, Finland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore...
I wonder why this doesn't hold on the individual level for extraversion.
ReplyDeleteEh? I know this is what this paper has said, but I don't think it is completely off kilter and left field.
http://infoproc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/earnings-effects-of-personality.html
"Thanks to a reader for pointing me to this recent paper by Heckman and collaborators, which makes use of data from the Terman study of gifted individuals (minimum IQ of 135 on the Stanford-Binet).
Of the personality factors, Conscientiousness and Extraversion had the largest (positive) effect on lifetime earnings: the most conscientious or extraverted individuals earned, on average, about 50% more than the least (see figures below). See here for more on Big 5 personality factors and a link to a personality test."
Restricted range for IQ of course.
The interesting thing is more that Conscientiousness drops out despite having an individual effect. I think there is a finding whereby rich countries have tended to downrate themselves in Conscientiousness though - if you're richer then perhaps you tend to be more laid back, or mass cultural organization allows people to relax their individual dutifulness? Really I don't know.
Thanks for the link. But earnings is just a proxy for intelligence. Things unrelated to intelligence contribute to it. Like conscientiousness for instance.
DeleteAnd when you boost the concept of extraversion with positive affect you're always going to have a problem sorting out what part belongs to extraversion and what comes from something like money. If I remember correctly, there wasn't a proper personality test of these participants until they were around 30 years old. By then some would have made more money than others and were perhaps in a better mood than the others.