Intelligence, personality, and creativity : unleashing the power of intelligence and personality traits to build a creative and innovative economy

Cognitive ability, as measured by IQ and background factors such as socioeconomic status and demographics have historically been seen as the principal determinants of a student’s academic success. However, a growing body of research from psychology, education, behavioral economics and neuroscience is showing that personality traits also predict academic and work performance. This change in paradigm suggests that education systems face a more complex challenge than traditionally recognized: to work not only with the different types of intelligence possessed by students but also with their different personality traits in order to produce academic success measured by cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This paper reviews the research findings from the different literatures (psychology, education, behavioral economics, and neuroscience) that relate to these questions. Several good reviews summarize the findings on aspects of these questions, but rarely address all of the questions above. In particular, those reviews do not shed light on how education can improve both cognitive and non-cognitive skills and how such skills promote creativity and labor market outcomes. The scientific literatures on human intelligence and personality are large, but our focus is on the subset of research findings that relate intelligence and personality to academic performance. Likewise, the literature on creativity, innovation, and productivity is extensive, but our focus will be on the research findings that relate academic performance to creativity and, ultimately, to productivity in the workplace.