In all 794 young people aged around 30 yrs completed three intelligence (Raven's Progressive matrices: GMA Numerical and GMA Verbal) and one personality inventory (16PF). They were all graduates and 173 were identified clearly as Arts graduates and 518 as Science students. There were various sex differences on all measures. All seven hypotheses…

Two studies are reported that used multiple measures of creativity to investigate creativity differences and correlates in arts and science students. The first study examined Divergent Thinking fluency, Self-Rated Creativity and Creative Achievement in matched groups of Art and Science students. Arts students scored higher than Science students on…

To learn if Protestant ethic endorsement predicted intelligence controlling for the big five personality factors, 364 college students from England and the United States completed a 65-item multifaceted work ethic endorsement measure, the 50-item Wonderlic Personnel Test, and a 60-item measure of the big five personality factors. A hierarchical…

Three UK studies on the relationship between a purpose-built instrument to assess the importance and development of 15 "soft skills" are reported. "Study 1" (N = 444) identified strong latent components underlying these soft skills, such that differences "between-skills" were over-shadowed by differences…

In recent years, beauty ideals and practices have been explained almost exclusively using evolutionary psychological frameworks, to the exclusion of more proximate factors such as psychosocial and individual psychological variables. To overcome this limitation, we examined the associations among sexist beliefs, objectification of others, media…

Nearly 500 members of the public rated 20 university degree subjects in terms of their usefulness for employability. The top three were Law, Maths and English whereas the bottom three were Fine Art, Anthropology and Theology. A factor analysis was conducted to group the 20 subjects into broad academic fields. Five factors were identified,…

Background: Both ability (measured by power tests) and non-ability (measured by preference tests) individual difference measures predict academic school outcomes. These include fluid as well as crystalized intelligence, personality traits, and learning styles. This paper examines the incremental validity of five psychometric tests and the sex and…

This study attempted a hierarchical integration of several dispositional determinants of test anxiety (TA) [Sarason, I.G. (1984). "Stress, anxiety and cognitive interference: Reactions to tests." "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology," 46, 929-938.], namely the Big Five personality traits [Costa, P.T. Jr., & McCrae,…

This study examined students' preferences for lecturers' personalities on three continents. Two-hundred and 35 university students in Malaysia, 347 university students in Britain and 139 university students in the United States provided ratings of 30 desirable and undesirable lecturer trait characteristics, which were coded into an internally…

A total of 221 (111 female and 110 male) British Medical students completed the NEO-FFI personality inventory [Costa, P. T., Jr., and McCrae, R. R. (1992). "Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual." Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.], an abbreviated version of Biggs'…

This study considered the effects of trait emotional intelligence (trait EI; Petrides & Mavroveli, 2007) and sociobiographical variables (age, gender, education level, number of languages known, age of onset of acquisition, context of acquisition, frequency of use, socialization, network of interlocutors, self-perceived proficiency) on…

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of fluid intelligence (gf) with trait Openness and Conscientiousness. A total of 2658 participants completed the NEO PI-R [Costa Jr., P. T. & MCrae, R. (1985). Revised NEO Personality Inventory and Five-Factor Inventory Professional Manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment…

Three studies, all on student populations, looked at the relationship between a recently psychometrised measure of General Knowledge [Irwing, P., Cammock, T., & Lynn, R. (2001). Some evidence for the existence of a general factor of semantic memory and its components. "Personality and Individual Differences," 30, 857-871], both long…

Background: This paper presents results from the first wave of a longitudinal study examining the effects of various psychosocial variables on scholastic achievement and behaviour at school. Aims: The main aim is to investigate the nature and strength of the effects of major individual difference dimensions on important outcome variables at school…