Personality, gender and self-perceived intelligence

One finding of research on subjectively estimated intelligence is that women tend to provide lower estimates of general, mathematical, and spatial ability but higher estimates of interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence than men. Given that personality variables have been shown to affect such estimates, this study explored the possibility that one reason for the sex differences may be male–female differences in personality and especially in neuroticism/emotional stability. Internet questionnaires were used to obtain personality data and intelligence estimates for 379 people. Analyses showed that while neuroticism was negatively associated with intelligence estimates, it did not completely account for the gender differences. Factor analysis revealed two factors labelled artistic/emotional and academic intelligence. Openness and Extraversion predicted the first factor while academic intelligence was predicted by seven variables and accounted for just over a quarter of the variance. Open, stable, disagreeable, introverted males who had IQ test experience and believed in IQ test validity gave themselves higher scores.