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.