Does personality vary across ability levels? A study using self and other ratings

To test the hypothesis that personality structure differs across levels of cognitive ability, personality traits of 154 participants of various ages and educational backgrounds were rated by themselves and two well-informed judges using the Estonian Personality Item Pool NEO (EPIP-NEO; Mõttus, Pullmann, & Allik, 2006). When participants were divided into two groups on the basis of their ability test scores, a relatively high cross-observer agreement was observed in the both ability groups. Although in the high-ability group personality traits were slightly less correlated and factor structures were somewhat more similar to the normative American self-report structure of the NEO-PI-R, there was no evidence that personality structure differs substantially across ability groups.