The combined effects of cognitive ability and neuroticism on performance in military assessment centres were investigated in two separate samples. We hypothesized that individuals with a “stress intolerant” profile of low ability and high neuroticism would perform worst. In Naval (N = 607) and Army (N = 62) samples this hypothesis was supported: performance ratings were negatively correlated with neuroticism only in the less cognitively able individuals; in the more cognitively able individuals, neuroticism was uncorrelated with performance. These data help to explain variation in associations between neuroticism and performance in applied fields. Taken together with other studies, results suggest that organisations could obtain extra predictive validity by measuring interactions between psychometric variables.
Cognitive ability correlates positively with performance in occupational settings (e.g. Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), but the relationship between the major personality dimension of neuroticism and applied performance is less clear: despite its presence in most models of personality, as well as its widespread clinical significance, neuroticism does not correlate consistently with performance in applied settings. For example, in a large-scale analysis Barrick and Mount (1991) found no significant relationship between emotional stability (low neuroticism) and job performance, except amongst professionals. More recently, Barrick, Mount, and Judge (2001), in a review of 100 years of research on personality-performance relationships, found that emotional stability was significantly related to performance in some occupations but not others.
One possible explanation for this variability is that high neuroticism individuals are prone to perform poorly in stressful environments (e.g. McFarlane, 1989); however, in stress-free environments their performance may be unimpaired, or even improved. There is some evidence to support this contention. For example, Cattell, Eber, and Tatsuoka (1970) found that people employed in five hazardous occupations (policeman, fireman, electrical engineer, airline pilot and hostess) tended to be less apprehensive, less tense, less imaginative and more emotionally stable than people employed in five non-hazardous occupations (janitor, nun, priest, foreman and artist). Hallam and Rachman (1980) found that bomb disposal operators were not only significantly more stable than the general population but also the most successful operators were significantly more stable than their lower performing colleagues. In addition, Bartram and Dale (1982) found that, whilst military pilot applicants as a group scored significantly lower on neuroticism than the general population, less neurotic individuals were more likely to pass pilot training - this trend seems to be a product of the additional stress of military aviation rather than flying per se, as civilian amateur pilots tend to be much closer to the general population norms in terms of average neuroticism scores than their military counterparts (Bartram, 1995).
