An Investigation of the Relationship between Personality, Cognitive Ability, and Work Engagement in Intellectually Gifted Individuals

Abstract

Do personality traits in highly intelligent individuals relate to their work engagement? Seemingly little is known about the relationship between personality and work engagement for gifted individuals. In what may be the first study to do so, a Swedish Mensa sample (n = 353) was explored with a two-part aim: to assess psychometric personality properties and to investigate the relationship between personality traits (Mini-IPIP6) and work engagement (UWES-9). The results of the Mensa members and the Mturk sample (1.4 SD lower in cognitive ability based on ICAR-16) were compared using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a regression. The findings indicated that the Mensa sample had higher openness (d = .50) and honesty-humility (d = .65) and that personality traits were similarly related to work engagement in both groups, with the exception that neither openness nor honesty-humility were related to work engagement in the Mensa sample. The characteristics of intellectually gifted individuals are further discussed.