Editorial Why it is ���better��� to be reliable but dumb than smart but slapdash: Are intelligence (IQ) and Conscientiousness best regarded as gifts or virtues a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 23 June 2009 Accepted 23 June 2009 s u m m a r y The psychological attributes of intelligence and personality are usually seen as being quite distinct in nat- ure: higher intelligence being regarded a ���gift��� (bestowed mostly by heredity) while personality or ���char- acter��� is morally evaluated by others, on the assumption that it is mostly a consequence of choice? So a teacher is more likely to praise a child for their highly Conscientious personality (high ���C���) ��� an ability to take the long view, work hard with self-discipline and persevere in the face of difficulty ��� than for pos- sessing high IQ. Even in science, where high intelligence is greatly valued, it is seen as being more virtuous to be a reliable and steady worker. Yet it is probable that both IQ and personality traits (such as high-C) are about-equally inherited ���gifts��� (heritability of both likely to be in excess of 0.5). Rankings of both IQ and C are generally stable throughout life (although absolute levels of both will typically increase throughout the lifespan, with IQ peaking in late-teens and C probably peaking in middle age). Furthermore, high IQ is not just an ability to be used only as required higher IQ also carries various behavioural predispositions ��� as reflected in the positive correlation with the personality trait of Open- ness to Experience and characteristically ���left-wing��� or ���enlightened��� socio-political values among high IQ individuals. However, IQ is ���effortless��� while high-C emerges mainly in tough situations where excep- tional effort is required. So we probably tend to regard personality in moral terms because this fits with a social system that provides incentives for virtuous behaviour (including Conscientiousness). In conclu- sion, high IQ should probably more often be regarded in morally evaluative terms because it is associated with behavioural predispositions while C should probably be interpreted with more emphasis on its being a gift or natural ability. In particular, people with high levels of C are very lucky in modern societies, since they are usually well-rewarded for this aptitude. This includes science, where it seems that C has been selected-for more rigorously than IQ. Indeed, those ���gifted��� with high Conscientiousness are in some ways even luckier than the very intelligent ��� because there are more jobs for reliable and hard-working people (even if they are relatively ���dumb���) than for smart people with undependable personalities. �� 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Moral evaluations of intelligence and personality The psychological attributes of intelligence and personality are usually seen as being quite distinct in nature: higher intelligence being regarded as a morally-neutral aptitude which is a lucky ���gift��� while personality or ���character��� is morally evaluated by others, on the assumption that it is mostly a consequence of choices. So a tea- cher is much more likely repeatedly to praise a child for excep- tional self-discipline and hard work than for being of high intelligence. In other words, virtue is seen as an aspect of charac- ter/personality rather than intelligence. General intelligence (aka. ���g factor��� intelligence, or ���intelligence quotient��� or IQ) [1���4] and the ���Big Five��� personality trait of Consci- entiousness [5���7] are the two main measurable psychological fac- tors, higher levels of which are predictive of better educational and job performance [8,9]. IQ is the aptitude that enables a person to think abstractly and logically, to solve a wide range of novel prob- lems, and to learn rapidly. The personality trait of Conscientiousness (���C���) incorporates fea- tures such as perseverance, self-discipline, meticulousness, and long-termism. In a nutshell, Conscientiousness is the capacity to work hard at a task over the long-term despite finding the task uninteresting and despite receiving no immediate reward. The usual conceptualization sees IQ as a gift and C as a virtue i.e. intelligence as an ability available to be used when necessary and personality traits such as Conscientiousness as a moral dispo- sition to make better or worse behavioural choices. The main- stream idea would be that people are not responsible for the level of their intelligence but are responsible for their behaviour. So apparently it makes sense to praise Conscientiousness as virtu- ous but not similarly to praise IQ. However, I will argue that ��� while there are indeed practical reasons to praise good behaviour ��� in reality IQ has morally-rele- vant elements, while high-C (and other valued personality traits) should also be regarded as a gift. So, both intelligence and person- ality can be regarded either as gifts or as virtues, according to context. Intelligence is regarded as a gift Most people regard intelligence as a ���gift��� ��� and highly intelligent children have sometimes been termed gifted. This 0306-9877/$ - see front matter �� 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.06.048 Medical Hypotheses 73 (2009) 465���467 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Medical Hypotheses journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mehy

interpretation is accurate, in the sense that the main known deter- minant of general intelligence is heredity: people inherit intelli- gence from their parents [1���4]. While bad experiences (such as starvation and disease in the womb or during infancy) can pull intelligence downwards, it is at present difficult or impossible sig- nificantly to raise a person���s real, underlying, long-term predictive general intelligence by any kind of environmental intervention [10]. (It may, however, be possible to raise IQ scores by practicing IQ tests and other focused interventions but this does not cash-out into significant and prolonged general benefits in terms of educa- tion and employment). IQ is calculated by testing groups of people at different ages, and (usually) putting their scores into rank order and organizing rank- ings onto a normal distribution curve with a mean average IQ of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Using this type of calculation, intelligence scores/rankings are relatively stable throughout life ��� so that a child of 8 with high IQ will usually grow to become an adult with similarly high IQ, and vice versa [1���4]. Because intelligence is a gift which is substantially hereditary and stable throughout life, on the whole it is regarded as a result of ���luck��� and something for which people should be grateful and not, therefore, as a virtue deserving of moral approbation or praise. Indeed, people with high intelligence may be given less help than they need, and may be held to a higher standard of behaviour, pre- cisely because they are regarded as lucky. Higher intelligence is socially valued more highly than lower intelligence, probably because people with a higher IQ are on aver- age more useful economically [11] (having higher economic pro- ductivity, on average) nonetheless the most intelligent people are not usually regarded as intrinsically virtuous nor especially morally praiseworthy. And although it is true that people of low intelligence may attract hurtful and insulting descriptors such as dumb, dull, slow or stupid nonetheless, a person with these attri- butes is not regarded as intrinsically wicked. Personality traits are morally evaluated There is a contrast between IQ and personality in respect of moral evaluations. While IQ is seen as a gift there is a spontaneous tendency to regard personality as a morally distinguishing feature ��� as a visible marker of a person���s underlying moral nature. It is quite normal to praise the most diligent people for their high capacity for hard work, and at the same time to regard them as merely fortunate if they are also of high intelligence. Yet it is probable that both IQ and personality traits (such as the ability to work hard) are almost-equally hereditary ���gifts���. The her- itability of IQ is generally quoted as between 0.5 and 0.8 (probably at the higher end) [1���4] and the heritability of personality is quoted as being around 0.5 [5���7]. However, the estimate of per- sonality heritability is certainly an underestimate due to the sub- optimal conceptualization of personality traits, and especially to the lesser precision of current personality measurement methods compared with IQ tests [4]. To the extent that these things can be observed in everyday experience, both IQ and personality are probably about-equally inherited and the high IQ and extra- hard-working person should about-equally thank their genes rather than congratulate themselves. Furthermore, rankings of personality, like IQ, are generally sta- ble throughout life so that a highly Conscientious child will prob- ably grow into a highly Conscientious adult and vice versa (whatever their familial, educational and socially experiences may be). However, it is also important to recognize that average personality traits change through the lifespan ��� e.g. Conscientious- ness levels increase through early adult life, while Extraversion de- clines [12]. The high-C personality type which enables people to work hard, be self-disciplined and pursue long-term goals is there- fore, in this sense, no more ���virtuous��� than the high IQ ability quickly to do complex verbal, mathematic and symbolic puzzles. But Conscientiousness is often regarded as highly moral behav- iour, and an exceptionally-reliable individual will probably be re- garded as virtuous even when they are of low IQ. However, in contrast, a person who is low in C is likely to be feckless, distract- ible, slapdash, and focused on short-term rewards ��� even when they are very intelligent. These behaviours are regarded as moral deficiencies and the coexistence of high IQ in some ways makes it worse, because it is often felt that clever people ���should know better���. Of course, low-C traits are negatively evaluated probably for the obvious reason that they are not very useful socially ��� in- deed a person of very low Conscientiousness is likely to be a poor student and troublesome employee under most circumstances. Aside, it should be noted that low-C may also be associated with some positively-evaluated attributes especially creativity (insofar as highly creative people tend to have very high IQ and moderately high ���Psychoticism��� which trait includes moderately-low Conscien- tiousness [13]). I have previously suggested that selecting for very high-C will therefore ��� as an unintended side effect ��� tend to re- duce the average level of creativity and that this may have hap- pened in science over the past several decades [14]. Furthermore, it has been argued that in the hunter gatherer societies of our ancestors it would probably have been advanta- geous for most people to have lower levels of C than seem to be optimal nowadays in the sense that it was more important for hunter gatherers to react spontaneously and quickly to immediate stimuli and less important for them to plan far ahead, or to be able to persevere in the unrewarding and often repetitive tasks that characterize much of formal education or agricultural and indus- trial employment [7]. But in modern societies, it is certainly an advantage (on aver- age) to have higher levels of C. Moral evaluation of personality The evidence therefore suggests that it is likely that although the two psychological attributes of IQ and C are not highly-corre- lated (see Ref. [13] for review) the ability to work hard and with self-discipline and the ability of general intelligence are about- equally inherited, about-equally stable throughout life, and about-equally difficult to change either by self-determination or by the social interventions of other people. It seems that we as individuals are pretty much ���stuck with��� the intelligence and the personalities with which we were born and it is strange that exceptional IQ should be regarded as a gift while exceptional C is regarded as being the praiseworthy result of resolution and effort. It might be argued that personality traits are associated with moral behaviours in a way that IQ is not. Certainly personality traits do have moral aspects. Three of the Big Five ��� Conscientious- ness, Agreeableness and Neuroticism ��� have one extreme which would generally be immoral [6,7]. For example, it would generally be regarded as ���bad behaviour��� to be low in Agreeableness since this would include selfishness, uncooperativeness, emotional cold- ness, unfriendliness, unhelpfulness. Likewise it may be regarded as socially-undesirable to be high in Neuroticism since this would in- clude proneness to mood swings, irritability and anger. But the reason that humans apparently spontaneously regard personality in moral terms is presumably because humans respond to incentives. Society would probably wish to encourage pro-social behaviour by praising it, on the basis that even though personality rankings cannot be much changed by whole-popula- tion interventions, at the individual level behaviour can be shaped by incentives ��� by rewards and punishments. Furthermore, high-C behaviour takes more effort than low-C behaviour. Although the ability to work hard on topics that are 466 Editorial / Medical Hypotheses 73 (2009) 465���467