The study performed a comprehensive examination of interrelationships among intelligence, motivation, and personality traits in problem solving that requires a combination of prognostic activity and following logical rules.

Objective. To determine the role of motivation, personality traits, and intelligence in predicting choice of strategies and the effectiveness of problem solving (using the Wason selection task). 

Method. Seventy-five undergraduate and graduate students from Moscow and Saint Petersburg participated in the study (age M = 21.2, SD = 2.6) and were asked to perform a problem-solving task on a computer. They also received a set of questionnaires: the Ten Item Personality Inventory (Big Five), Personal Preferences Schedule (motivation), two subtests aimed at measuring verbal crystallized intelligence (Mill-Hill and Verbal Analogies) and fluid intelligence (Three-Dimensional Rotation, Matrix Reasoning).

Results. Fluid intelligence showed a positive correlation with extraversion, while verbal intelligence showed a negative correlation with agreeableness and conscientiousness. These three personality traits were also related to problem-solving effectiveness. Fluid intelligence showed a negative correlation with guilt, while verbal intelligence showed a positive correlation with achievement motivation. Intelligence scores were not related to the success of problem solving in the Wason selection task, and neither were emotional stability and openness to experience. 

Effectiveness and the duration of decision making in different attempts to perform the task were correlated with motivation of autonomy, guilt, aggression, and, at the statistical trend level, with motivation of achievement and intraception.

Conclusion. The data largely supported the general hypothesis regarding the role of non-specific motivational tendencies in solving the Wason selection task. For this deterministic problem, we found positive correlations of decision making with motivation of autonomy and endurance, whereas negative correlations were obtained for motivation of aggression.

The article presents the result of a series of five empirical studies. Across multiple samples with typical development we have established a set of relationships between decision making strategies in Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and such traits as intelligence (general, verbal), executive functions (shifting and inhibition), as well as personality traits of tolerance/intolerance for uncertainty and Big Five personality traits.

The series of empirical studies aimed at verifying a set of hypotheses regarding the role of intelligence and tolerance/intolerance for uncertainty as predictors of choice strategies in IGT, regarding the contribution of executive functions to the regulation of these strategies, as well as identifying the specifics of prognostic strategies of professionals whose occupation involves high risk – i.e., military leaders.

The main measure was Iowa Gambling Task. This task relies on the prognostic/anticipatory activity of the person playing the game that regulates the sequence of choices that they make from four decks of “cards” that have a probabilistic structure of gains and losses, unknown to the participant at the beginning. According to A. Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, emotional components play a key role in decision making regulation.

Studies 1 through 3 recruited undergraduate students and general population samples; studies 4 and 5 relied on samples of military leaders.

In addition to the IGT, we also measures a set of cognitive and personality traits, including executive functions (using the Go/No Go paradigm), intelligence (using ROADS and ICAR), tolerance-intolerance for uncertainty (using the NTN questionnaire), Big Five personality traits (using the TIPI questionnaire), and personal factors of decision making (using the LFR questionnaire).

The studies revealed significant and positive contributions of intelligence and executive functions (i.e., shifting and inhibition) to decisional efficiency and the development of choice strategies, thus implicating cognitive orienting as the key component of decision making in IGT. We also established a set of group differences in both strategies and patterns of the regulation of choices in IGT between military and non-military samples. We also found that it is specifically during early game stages (characterized by maximal uncertainty) that specific personality traits contribute most to decision making – tolerance for uncertainty was such a predictor for our non-military samples, and risk readiness acted as one in military leaders. Conventional Big Five personality traits did not contribute to participants’ performance in the IGT.

In this paper, we report the results from an empirical study that used a college students sample (n=304, Mean=19.49, SD=2.11; 206 females, 98 males) and investigated the relationship among rigidity variables, acceptance of uncertainty (tolerance/intolerance for uncertainty, risk readiness), rationality and reflexivity, intelligence (analytical and practical), and creativity. We used the following measures: The New Tolerance for Uncertainty Questionnaire, Personality Factors of Decision Making, Tomsk Rigidity Questionnaire, Reflexivity-27 Questionnaire, and the ROADS battery. We tested a set of hypotheses regarding the positive relationships between rigidity and a set of variables that included rationality, reflexivity, and intolerance for uncertainty, regarding the relationships between creativity and tolerance for uncertainty, risk readiness, and rigidity, as well as regarding the relationships between personality variables and academic achievement (GPA). We found that verbal creativity was positively related to reflexivity and negatively — with attitudinal rigidity. Crystallized intelligence was positively related to both academic achievement and creativity. Fluid intelligence was negatively related to rationality, and although both intelligence measures were positively inter-correlated, fluid intelligence was not related to creativity. We also showed that creativity is a positive predictor of achievement, whereas premorbid rigidity is a negative one; tolerance for uncertainty, creativity, and rationality were not related to achievement. However, reflexivity was related to creativity measured with the “Creative Stories” task: higher creativity was related to higher personality reflexivity and low attitudinal rigidity. Intolerance for uncertainty and risk readiness, on the other hand, are negatively related to achievement in college students.

The aim of this study is to find out the reason why intellectually gifted adolescents may have poor academic achievements. Comprehensive analysis of psychometric intelligence, conscious self-regulation of learning activities and academic achievements relationships was carried out on a sample of 87 students aged 14—16 years. All of them attended school for gifted adolescents Sozvezdie and enrolled in a special academic program (A Gifted Child). A comparison of KFT and SSUDM questionnaires average values (on standardization and study samples) showed that gifted adolescents have higher levels of conscious self-regulation and regulatory processes of planning, modeling, and programming than their ordinary peers. The relationships between all regulatory processes, overall level of conscious self-regulation and IQ level with academic achievements in humanities and sciences were established. It was also proved that conscious self-regulation mediates students’ academic achievement. It can be concluded that high self-regulation of educational activity is as important for academic achievements as high IQ-level. Only the students who are initiative in regulating learning process as well as their activity in school can achieve the highest results. Thus, initiativity and autonomy are the link between the motivational sphere, IQ and the system of conscious self-regulation of educational activities.

The study is aimed at revealing interrelationships between coping behavior and intellectual and personality components of the dynamic regulation of choice under uncertainty in college students (n=480). We establish correlations between productive/unproductive coping strategies and academic achievement, analytical and practical intelligence, implicit theories of intelligence and personality, goal orientations and also such personality predictors of overcoming uncertainty as risk readiness and rationality.

The article is devoted to peculiarities of the intelligence specialists in the field of information technology. The object of study was chosen the base for this group of occupations specialty — programmer. Built average intelligence profile for the profession and is compared with the profile of intelligence accountants is a profession belonging to the same group of “man — sign system”. The obtained results are interpreted on the basis of the characteristics of each professional activity.

This study examined coping styles and intellectual characteristics of self-regulation in learning activity of technical and humanitarian student in college. Results of this study students sample (N=546) allowed to conclude, that people with high level of psychometric intelligence use far less emotion-oriented and avoidance-oriented coping styles.

The present paper discusses contemporary problems and approaches to the development of assessments in domains of educational psychology and psychology of abilities. We briefly report the results of the development and the adaptation of two assessment batteries based on R. Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence. The paper shows that a cross-cultural adaptation of contemporary foreign assessments is a productive approach.