Is IQ related to the Big Five personality trait “emotional stability” (i.e., a lack of neuroticism)?

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No. We measured four facets of emotional stability with SAPA statements: anxiety (e.g., “I typically fear for the worst.” or “I spend a lot of time worrying.”), emotional intensity (e.g., “I don't think that my moods change more than most people's do.” or “I rarely get excited or upset about anything.”), irritability (e.g., “I get angry less often than other people do.” or “I rarely get annoyed.”) and well-being (e.g., “I have feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness.” or “I don't like myself.”). The statements were always coded so that a higher score means higher emotional stability (i.e., lower neuroticism, which entails lower anxiety, lower emotional intensity, lower irritability and higher well-being). In addition to this, we also measured the total emotional stability score by combining the facet scores. All the correlations between IQ and emotional stability facets or global trait scores were negligible and only one of the correlations was higher than 0.10 (r = 0.11 between IQ and SAPA facet of emotional intensity).The sample size was n = 492. Here are the scatterplots of all the correlations.

What do the other studies say?

Our results align with two meta-analyses that examined the relationships between personality traits and facets and IQ and showed that the correlation between IQ and emotional stability trait/facets doesn't exceed r = 0.10 (Anglim et al., 2022; Poropat, 2009).

Takeaways

• IQ and emotional stability are not related.

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