Intelligence and job performance: Economic and social implications.

Abstract

General mental ability (intelligence) is the dominant determinant of the large individual differences in work output on the job revealed by research, but highly visible individual differences in citizenship behavior on the job make the intelligenceperformance relationship harder to observe in everyday life. Over time, the validity of job experience for predicting performance declines, while that of ability remains constant or increases. Path analyses indicate that the major reason ability predicts performance so well is that higher ability individuals learn relevant job knowledge more quickly and learn more of it. The current social policy that strongly discourages use of mental ability in hiring is counterproduc tive and has produced severe performance decrements. This policy should be changed to encourage the use of ability measures. However, it should also encourage the use of personality measures that increase overall predictive validity while simultaneously reducing differences in minority-majority hiring rates. General mental ability (intelligence) plays a dominant role in the determination of individual differences in job performance. This statement is no longer controversial among researchers who study job performance. However, both laypeople and psychologists from other areas often find this statement controversial. Many people believe that this statement cannot be true even though it has been confirmed by thousands of empirical studies. There are two reasons why many people find it hard to believe that intelligence is the main determinant of variation in job performance. First, most people greatly underestimate the extent of differences in performance. Thus, they underestimate the importance of job performance in the evaluation of workers. Second, most people confuse two different dimensions of personnel evaluation: (a) performance (i.e., productivity) and (b) citizenship behavior (i.e., social behavior at work). These background problems are so strong that they interfere with the ability of readers to follow discussions of findings on performance. Therefore, we will first discuss citizenship behavior and the word performance. We will then discuss the extent of individual differences in performance. After discussing these two preliminary issues we will return to our main topic: the strong relationship between intelligence and job performance.