Is IQ related to the Big Five personality trait “agreeableness”?

Note: This is a section of a longer article. To go to the start, click here.

Barely, but there is a slight positive correlation between IQ and some facets of agreeableness. Using SAPA statements, we measured the following three agreeableness facets on a sample of n = 493:(a) Trust with statements such as “I believe that people are basically good.” and “I trust that others have good intentions.”; b) Compassion with statements such as “I would feel very sorry for an animal caught in a trap.” and “I am sensitive to other people's needs.”; c) Empathy with statements such as “I feel the emotions of others.” and “I feel sympathy for those who are worse off than me.”). We were also able to calculate the total SAPA agreeableness score by combining the facet scores. All the correlations were very low, practically negligible, with the highest one being between IQ and total SAPA agreeableness score (r = 0.122), followed by the one between IQ and SAPA empathy score (r = 0.117). The other two correlations were all smaller than r = 0.10. Here are the scatterplots of all the correlations:

What do the other studies say?

Other studies, similarly as ours, generally find very low or non-existing correlations between IQ and agreeableness (e.g., Anglim et al., 2022 meta-analysis, Kaufman, 2014, Poropat, 2009 meta-analysis).

Takeaways

• There is very low, almost negligible, positive correlation between IQ and agreeableness, as well as between IQ and the "empathy" facet of agreeableness

If you'd like to read the full report, of which this is a section, as one long PDF, you can download it here.

And if you'd like to understand where your intellectual strengths and weaknesses lie, try the cognitive assessment tool that we developed out of this research:

Launch the Cognitive Assessment!