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The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between trait Neuroticism, state anxiety and intelligence. A total of 213 participants (divided into high-anxiety and low-anxiety groups) completed the Raven’s Progressive Matrices and the Traits Personality Questionnaire 5 (the shortened version of a Greek Big Five measure-TPQue). Correlational analysis showed that trait Neurotics were more likely to be affected by test anxiety and by induced anxiety, and that the high-anxiety group scored lower on the intelligence test than the low-anxiety group. Neuroticism was significantly correlated with intelligence for the high-anxiety group but not for the low-anxiety group, although these correlations were not significantly different. Furthermore, when test anxiety was partialled out, Neuroticism did not significantly correlate with intelligence. These results support the majority of the hypotheses, indicating that the relationship between intelligence and trait Neuroticism is mediated by test anxiety.

The majority of the investigations published since 1980, which have looked at how the constructs of intelligence and personality are interrelated, have mostly focused on personality as conceived and measured by the Five-Factor Model, proposed by Costa and McCrae (1985). The most consistent findings within this line of research are that intelligence is negatively correlated with Neuroticism ( Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997, Furnham et al., 1998, Kyllonen, 1997 and Zeidner and Matthews, 2000) and Conscientiousness ( Furnham et al., 2005, Moutafi et al., 2003, Moutafi et al., 2004 and Moutafi et al., 2005), positively correlated with Openness to Experience ( Austin et al., 2002, Brand, 1994, Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2005, McCrae, 1994, Moutafi et al., 2003, Moutafi et al., 2005 and Zeidner and Matthews, 2000) and both positively and negatively correlated with Extraversion ( Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997, Austin et al., 2002, Furnham et al., 1998, Lynn et al., 1984, Moutafi et al., 2003 and Moutafi et al., 2005) depending mostly on the testing conditions. The aim of this study is to further investigate the nature of the relationship between intelligence and Neuroticism. Neuroticism reflects a tendency to experience negative emotions, like anxiety and depression (Busato, Prins, Elshout, & Hamaker, 2000). The six sub-facets of Neuroticism, according to Costa and McCrae (1992) are Anxiety, Anger-hostility, Depression, Self-consciousness, Impulsiveness and Vulnerability. High scorers tend to be sensitive, emotional, worrying, moody, frequently depressed, often sleep badly and may suffer from various psychosomatic disorders (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). Low scorers tend to be secure, hardy and generally relaxed even under stressful conditions. It has been proposed that individual differences in Neuroticism have a biological basis (Eysenck, 1967), more specifically that they are due to differences in the functioning of the limbic system (Stough, Donaldson, Scarlata, & Ciorciari, 2001). Among the first studies which reported a negative correlation between intelligence and Neuroticism was an early study by Callard and Goodfellow (1962), and their finding has been replicated many times since then (Dobson, 2000). In a large meta-analysis of 135 studies, performed by Ackerman and Heggestad (1997), Neuroticism was reported to modestly negatively correlate with general intelligence (g), with a magnitude of r = −.15, and Kyllonen (1997) also reported a correlation of r = −.23 with g and r = −.20 with verbal ability. Studies have further shown that Neuroticism is a negative predictor of g ( Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2005 and Moutafi et al., 2003). It has been suggested that Neuroticism is negatively correlated with intelligence mostly due to the anxiety component of Neuroticism (Zeidner, 1998 and Zeidner and Matthews, 2000). It is important here to distinguish between trait and state anxiety. Trait anxiety is an individual’s stable, cross-situation, predisposition to respond with worry, tension and physiological arousal across a variety of conditions. State anxiety is a transitory emotional state; it is a particular level of anxiety which is experienced in a particular situation and is associated with heightened activity of the autonomic nervous system (Spielberger, 1972 and Zeidner and Matthews, 2000). It is therefore essential to distinguish whether intelligence is directly related to Neuroticism (due to its trait anxiety component), or whether intelligence is instead related to state (test) anxiety, indicating that the relationship between intelligence and Neuroticism is not direct, but is actually mediated by state anxiety affecting intelligence test performance. These two suggestions, of how intelligence is related to Neuroticism, are pictorially represented in Fig. 1. Full-size image (13 K) Fig. 1. Two models representing Neuroticism being directly related to intelligence (Model 1) and the relationship between Neuroticism and intelligence being mediated by test anxiety affecting IQ test performance (Model 2). Figure options Studies on the relationship between intelligence and trait anxiety, which is a component of Neuroticism, have yielded contradictory findings (Matarazzo, 1972). Although some studies have reported a negative correlation between trait anxiety, and intelligence (Samuel, 1980 and Tapasak et al., 1978), others did not find a significant relationship between the two (Leith, 1972 and Leon and Revelle, 1985). Findings on the relationship between state anxiety and intelligence have been more consistent, yet still not conclusive. Samuel (1980), for example, did not find a significant relationship between state anxiety and IQ, and Idzikowski and Baddeley (1983) reported a significant relationship between state anxiety and creativity, but not with logical reasoning. However, the majority of the investigations have reported a deleterious effect of state anxiety on cognitive ability performance (Leon & Revelle, 1985). Support for this claim has been provided by Sarason (1980), who reported that state anxiety can impair intellectual functioning in a variety of contexts, from IQ test scores to school achievement. Eysenck and Eysenck (1985) also reported a number of studies showing a deleterious effect of state anxiety on several measures of performance, such as digit recall and solving anagrams. Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) in their meta-analysis reported a correlation of r = −.33 between g and self-report measures of test anxiety, which is state anxiety due to testing conditions. It has been proposed that test anxiety consists of two conceptually distinct components, worry, which is a cognitive concern over performance and its consequences, and emotionality, which are physiological changes with unpleasant feelings of unease, nervousness and tension (Liebert & Morris, 1967). Recently, Oostdam and Meijer (2003) suggested that test anxiety comprises also of a third component, lack of self-confidence, although this finding has not yet been replicated. Research has shown that it is the worry rather than the emotionality component of test anxiety that is primarily associated with decrement of performance (Spielberger et al., 1978 and Dobson, 2000). It has been suggested that the negative effect of state anxiety on intellectual functioning originates from the working memory system. According to Eysenck and Eysenck (1985) “It seems reasonably well established that anxiety reduces the efficiency of short-term storage and long-term memory, that it increases attentional selectivity, that it decreases accuracy without affecting performance speed, and that it increases distractibility” (p. 310). That is, high-anxiety individuals engage in significantly more task-irrelevant processing (worry) than low-anxiety individuals, which interferes with their performance (Eysenck, 1979). The apparent negative relationship between anxiety and intelligence does not necessarily imply that individuals who have test anxiety perform less well on the ability tests due to their anxiety. It could be that individuals with lower intelligence, being aware of their likelihood to perform poorly, become more anxious under test conditions (Muller, 1992). However, as Tobias (1985) noted, this ‘deficit hypothesis’ does not explain the negative correlation between test anxiety and performance for high achieving individuals. Oostdam and Meijer (2003) furthermore directly tested whether the negative correlation between test anxiety and IQ test performance can be explained by the deficit hypothesis, or by the occurrence of task-irrelevant processing, which they referred to as the interfering hypothesis. Their results provided support for the interfering and not for the deficit hypothesis. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between Neuroticism, test anxiety and intelligence. Previous research has shown that the relationship between Neuroticism and intelligence is mostly due to state anxiety, which mostly affects Neurotic individuals (Zeidner, 1998 and Zeidner and Matthews, 2000). In order to investigate this suggestion, two groups were tested on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices and on the Neuroticism scale of the TPQue5, (the shortened version of a Greek Big 5 measure), one state induced high-anxiety group and one low-anxiety (control group). The high-anxiety group was given information intended to induce state anxiety, and a manipulation check was established. Self-report measures of test anxiety were used in the high-anxiety group prior to completion of the tests, and after the anxiety-inducing information was given, prior to completion of the IQ test. The first hypothesis (H1) in this study is that Neuroticism will be positively correlated with the initial level of anxiety (test anxiety) and with the level of anxiety after receiving the anxiety-inducing information (induced anxiety). This tests whether high Neurotics are more stressed under testing conditions, and whether they are more stressed when they receive information which induces anxiety, than low Neurotics. The second hypothesis (H2) is that the correlation between Neuroticism and intelligence will be higher in the high-anxiety group than in the low-anxiety group. This tests whether state anxiety has a deleterious effect on IQ test performance. The third hypothesis (H3) is that the correlation between intelligence and Neuroticism will not be significant in the high-anxiety group, when test anxiety is controlled for. This investigates whether the relationship which has been observed between Neuroticism and intelligence is due to test anxiety.