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Intelligence in the Workplace

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

Cognitive ability; General mental ability

Definition

A definition of intelligence that has been accepted by experts who specialize in the study of intelligence in the workplace was provided in a unique Wall Street Journal article (Arvey et al. 1994, p. A18):

Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings – “catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out what to do.”

Introduction

Employee job performance is often regarded as the most important criterion in the workplace (Bennett et al. 2006). Accordingly, it is not surprising that the search, over the years, for the most important predictors of job performance has been exhaustive, relentless, and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Richard Goffin

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  1. Richard Goffin
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Correspondence to Richard Goffin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Western University, Canada http://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8

    Julie Schermer

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Goffin, R. (2016). Intelligence in the Workplace. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_770-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_770-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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