Intelligence and Personality as Determinants of Achievement

This article discusses the contributions of intelligence and personality in gaining achievements and the ways it affects the well-being of an individual mentally and emotionally. It sheds light on the important components of intelligence and how the presence of such components ensures achievements and success in individuals.

Running head: ACHIEVEMENT
ACHIEVEMENT
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Introduction:
Achievement can be defined as the capability that helps in accomplishing important
things based on either acquired skills or that of knowledge. It is important for every individual to
recognize and thereby try their best to achieve their goals not only in their lives but also on
regular days to live life successfully (Tempelaar et al., 2015). Achievement helps in developing
confidence as well as motivation for moving forward in life and completing different objectives
that help individuals to meet their aspirations and their ambitions. Most of the young people are
seen to get formal qualifications at school but learning also takes place outside the classroom, at
home as well as in the wider community (Papadoupoulas, Parrila &Kirby, 2015). Individuals
tend to learn throughout their lives and different knowledge gained through their life help them
in polishing their skills in ways by which they can experience achievement in different activities.
Researchers are of the opinion that two intricate factors are intricately associated with
achievement. These are the intelligence and the performance. The assignment will mainly shed
light on the contributions of the two factors in gaining achievements and the ways it affects the
well-being of an individual mentally and emotionally.
Intelligence:
Intelligence can be defined as the ability of learning something new in life or develop a
skill that is important for achieving things. From many years, there have been concerns among
the researchers who were quite concerned about three important facts. They needed to know
whether intelligence is unitary or it is multifaceted (Magano, Craparo & Paolillo, 2016). They
also wanted to know whether intelligence is determined by genetic factors or the environmental
factors. They also wanted to know whether it helps in achieving academic success and success

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outside the schools. The Factor Analytical Approach was proposed by Charles Spearman in the
year 1927. He had proposed that intelligence is comprised of general factor “g” which is actually
the general mental ability that are involved in all the cognitive tasks and another factor called the
specific factor “s” which are the factors that are unique for a specific task. Later, another
researcher called the Lewis Thurnstone in the year 1938 had challenged this unitary concept. The
later had said that seven important skills form the components of intelligence. These are the
verbal meaning, reasoning, perceptual speed, rote memory, number, spatial visualization and
word fluency. Another theory had been also proposed which is called the Information Processing
approach or the Sternberg’s processing approach (Valerius & Sparfeldt, 2015).
In this theory, the researchers have argued that in order to understand the concept of
intelligence and its contribution to the achievement of an objective, they should assess the ways
by which people utilize their information processing capabilities. Therefore, they have studied on
the memory as well as the problem solving skills in order to execute the different types of
intelligence activities and thereby concluded its effects on achievements. Sternberg’s Triacrchic
Theory have proposed of the three main components of the intelligence. These are the
information processing skills, experience with the tasks and even the ability for adapting to the
demands of the context. He had farther developed this where he now proposes the theory of
successful intelligence (Watkins & Styck, 2017). This theory mainly states about the capability
of the individuals in fitting into, changing and thereby choosing of the environments, which can
most successfully fulfill the needs and desires of the individuals and help in meeting the
demands of the culture and society of the individual. He also talks about the practical as well as
the tacit knowledge. This is mainly the implicit knowledge that is shared but many individuals
and that is responsible for guiding the behavior of the individual. This theory had been applied in

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the curriculum of the school, which had indeed helped teens for improvement of their scores, as
well as in the university entrance exams. Moreover, it was also seen that children who were
advised to follow their curriculum depending on this there were seen to be more enjoying. They
were more satisfied and enjoyed the materials in comparisons to the other children who were
taught the same information in the traditional manner (Kaya, Juntune & Stough, 2017).
Therefore, one can conclude that better the intelligence of the individuals, better will be their
chances of achievement.
Howard Gardener had proposed Gardener’s theory of Multiple Intelligence in the year
2004. The researcher has proposed that humans possess eight different types of intelligence.
These are linguistic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, logical-mathematical, musical,
intrapersonal and being naturalistic. The researcher believes that all these types of skills are
extremely significant for effective human functioning and in turn associates with achievements
(Ali & Ara, 2017). There had been evidences where this work had been extensively used for the
improvement of the public education that accompanies varied as well as individualized
instruction. There had been many queries regarding the reasons why people differ in measured
intelligence as different people have different capabilities in achieving their goals. Enough
evidences have talked about the support for the significance of hereditary in intelligence with the
rest of the cases being considered because of variability in the environmental factors as well as
both social factors like family, school, peers as well as non-social which are dietary and diseases
factors or the pollutants. One of the famous theorist namely Arthur Jenson had been holding
extreme views and he had proposed two types of learning (Kenett et al., 2016). The first being
the associative learning including the short term memory, rote-learning, simple associative skills
and attention. This type of intelligence is mainly present in all individuals. The second type of

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learning is the abstract thinking, use of language in problem solving, conceptual learning as well
as symbolic procedures. This type of intelligence is mainly present among different ethnic
groups.
Although the above mentioned theories have put forward the components of intelligence
which show that presence of the components help in achieving a particular goals or objectives
but other researchers do not tend to follow the pathways. People who are deemed as intelligent
individuals and people who are seen to be achievers in life are often called to be the two sides of
the same coin. This means intelligence is accepted to be the factor that helps in achievements, as
they possess the knowledge and skills to achieve the goals successfully (Abedaliz et al., 2017).
However, there have been arguments that state that achievement is not necessarily bases its
foundation on the knowledge of the individual and the ways the individuals use the knowledge to
complete his tasks. Researchers have stated that an individual can achieve something solely by
the determination and willingness to work harder than what others might work to achieve the
goals. Many of the researchers are also of the opinion that achievement might also be based on
pure luck while intelligence might be innate or develop over the long period of time. There had
been many of the instances where it is seen that individuals might be well-educated or might be
highly intelligent but they fail to achieve their goals. This might be due to many factors like
laziness, lack of confidence, lack of proper help and circumstantial situations and many others
(Lourinho, Ferreira & Severo, 2017).
Personality can be explained as the intra-individual organization of different types of
experiences as well as behaviors. It is seen to mainly reflect to the characteristic patterns of the
thought as well as emotion and behavior of the individuals together with the psychological
mechanisms. Researchers have defined it as the organized as well as developing system within a

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person that actually reflects the collective action of the major psychological subsystem of the
individuals (Adinasari, 2017). Personality mainly comprises of the unique combination of
different types of characteristics that help in defining the individual feelings of the person, his
way of thinking as well as behaviors. One of the most used personality model is the NEO five
factor model that had been developed by McCrae and Costa. It is mainly seen to comprise of the
Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness. The
Big five personality tests had indeed become successful in understanding and explaining the
moderate percentage of the variance in achievement.
Different examples can be used which shows that personality of the individuals are
intricately linked with different types of achievements. Neuroticism is the condition where
individuals go through the conditions of fear and nervousness in the stressful situations. This trait
in the personality make the individuals suffer from poor self-concept as well as lower amount of
self-intelligence (Rimfield et al., 2016). This actually acts as the barrier by which the individuals
cannot achieve the goals that he had set for himself and this personality trait becomes a barrier
for his success. Researchers have found that neuroticism has the capacity of impairing academic
achievement. Again, another trait is the openness to experience. This trait of the personality is
also associated as the predictor of the achievements that individuals experience in lives.
Openness to experiences and agreeableness are seen to be positive related with academic
achievement (Avery et al., 2015). Conscientiousness can be described as the personality trait by
which individuals need to be careful and vigilant. Individuals who have high level of this trait are
seen to harbor the desire to do a task well and they are also seen to take obligations to others
much seriously. Researchers are of the opinion that nature of conscientiousness individuals tend

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to be organized and efficient in comparison to that of the easy going as well as disorderly nature
of the others and hence the former can achieve their set goals efficiently.
Extraversion is yet another factor of personality that might determine whether the
individual would be able to achieve his target of fail miserably. Person who scores high on this
scale are seen to enjoy with people, participate in social gatherings and are full of energy in
comparison to those who are scoring low on this scale. Studies conducted on students show those
high scores of extraversion test may result in poorer performance and failure to achieve goals.
This is mainly because extraverts tend to be easily satisfied, social and highly energetic which
result in poor academic performance (Lechnar, Danner & Rammstedt, 2017). This is mainly
through their peak activation time at night as well as ineffective and lazy habits of studying.
Moreover, they are also seen to be higher in the emotional levels, which increase their chances of
being impulsive in nature in reaction to different successful and unsuccessful outcomes. This
makes them less capable of performing tasks efficiently and hence they fail to achieve their set
goals. Therefore, it can be seen that students scoring high on this trait are less successful and
those scoring less are highly successful in their achievements (Yeager et al., 2014).
From the entire discussion above, it is seen that intelligence and personality are indeed
two of the most important determinants of achievements in the life of an individual. Over the
years, different researchers have put forward interesting theories where they have talked about
the important components of intelligence and how the presence of such components ensures
achievements and success in individuals. Verbal meaning, reasoning, rote memory, spatial
visualization, naturalistic skills, musical, intra and inter personal skills all determine intelligence
and accordingly how they help in achieving a goal. Often hereditary, culture, genetic,
environmental factors and many others determine the level of intelligence among individuals

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although there are many arguments about it. Although these theories have been put forward,
many researchers believe, that luck, determination, willingness and similar other factors might
affect an individual’s achievement although they might be intelligent. Therefore, the debate
continues. Again, on the other hand, personality is also seen to be one of the predictors of
achievements. There are five important aspects of an individual’s personality and these are
Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness.
While Neuroticism and Extraversion are negatively associated with an individual’s achieving a
goal bit others like the Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness to Experience have
positive correlations with achievements by an individual. Therefore, one can conclude that
personality is indeed associated with achievement but debate regarding intelligence as the
predictor of achievement is still continuing among the different researchers in their concerned
fields.

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