Personality, Not Intelligence, Determines Your Success
What you are seems to be a better indicator of success than how you think. Personality is prime, not your grey cells, or intelligence, according to a new paper published in Learning and Individual Differences.
It's your conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, emotional stability, and extraversion that matters, sayd Dr. Arthur Poropat from Griffith's School of Applied Psychology, Australia. He compared the 'Big Five' personality factors to the standardized testing scores. And discovered that students who had these traits, especially those who were conscientious and open, got better grades than the others, according to mindbodygreen.com.
"In practical terms, the amount of effort students are prepared to put in, and where that effort is focused, is at least as important as whether the students are smart," Poropat said, in a press release. "And a student with the most helpful personality will score a full grade higher than an average student in this regard."
Most students who assess themselves would point out some personality indicators that would be predictive of intelligence rankings, according to Propat. However, other students' predictions turn out to be more accurate in predicting academic success. When another person who knows the student well rates his or her personality, it's nearly four times more correct.
Hence, if you feel that you were not naturally born with certain intelligence indicators, you can develop those personality traits that are linked with academic performance. You just need to put in the effort to develop them.
What is important, then, is not whether you are gifted with the brains. Your drive matters.
Of course there is nothing really earth-shattering about this finding, for everyone knows that in the corporate world, it is Emotional Quotient that matters how you perform at work, rather than your Intelligence Quotient. Since 1985, David Goleman has predicated that EQ is a better indicator of good performance than IQ. Still, personality as the driving force of academic performance is a comparatively new concept.
