The relationship between estimated and psychometric personality and intelligence scores

Students (N=83) completed one personality and four intelligence tests a week after arriving at university. Three months later they were presented with the descriptive statistics and norms for these measures (as well as a full description of what each attempted to test) and asked to estimate their scores. Correlations between estimated and actual scores showed wider variations for personality (r=.27 for Agreeableness; r=.58 for Conscientiousness) than intelligence, where correlation varied between r=.39 for the Wonderlic Personnel Test and r=.49 for the Baddley Reasoning Test. Furthermore, results showed that people with higher self-estimated Conscientiousness scores tended to score lower on intelligence tests. Also those with higher self-estimated Openness scores tended to give higher self-estimated intelligence score. Findings are discussed in light of the existing literature and the current interest in personality–intelligence interactions, as well as past research looking at people’s insight into their intellectual ability and personality scores.