The two trainable personal qualities you are about to read about is more vital to success than IQ, and the qualities can be said to which predict success four times more than intelligence.
These qualities are; Being open to experience and conscientious (the desire to do a task well).
People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.
Conscientious people, meanwhile, are disciplined, dutiful and good at planning ahead.
According to a study conducted by one Dr Arthur Poropat, the current emphasis on intelligence is misplaced:
“With respect to learning, personality is more useful than intelligence for guiding both students and teachers.
Using students as examples, he further stated that “the amount of effort a student is prepared to put in, and where that effort is focused, is at least as important as whether the student is smart.
A student with the most helpful personality will perform better than an average student in this regard.”
Students’ assessments of their own personality were just as good at predicting their exam performance as their intelligence, the study found.
But, when another person who knew them well assessed their personality, this predicted their exam performance almost four times better than intelligence.
Dr Poropat continued:
“Intelligence tests have always been closely linked with education and grades and therefore relied upon to predict who would do well.
The impact of personality on study is genuinely surprising for educational researchers, and for anyone who thinks they did well at school because they are ‘smart’.”
The good news is that conscientiousness and openness to experience are trainable, Dr Poropat said:
“Personality does change, and some educators have trained aspects of students’ Conscientiousness and Openness, leading to greater learning capacity.
By contrast, there is little evidence that intelligence can be ‘taught’, despite the popularity of brain-training apps.”
