Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives

Abstract

Individual differences in intelligence are consistently associated with leader performance, including the assessed performance of presidents of the United States. Given this empirical significance, IQ scores were estimated for all 42 chief executives from George Washington to G. W. Bush. The scores were obtained by applying missing-values estimation methods (expectation-maximization) to published assessments of (a) IQ (Cox, 1926; n = 8), (b) Intellectual Brilliance (Simonton, 1986c; n = 39), and (c) Openness to Experience n = 32). The resulting scores were then shown to correlate with evaluations of presidential leadership performance. The implications for George W. Bush and his presidency were then discussed.

Artists as experts in visual cognition: An update.

“…By contrast, performance on the Limited-Line Tracing Task expertise has produced inconsistent findings. However, it has been argued that in welldefined domains such as music, sports, and chess the role of IQ in performance is minimal, whereas individual differences in creativity in the arts and sciences are more likely to reflect the influence of IQ and other dispositional traits (Simonton, 2006;2016). Due to the close EXPERTS IN VISUAL COGNITION 33 relationship of visual-spatial tasks with non-verbal IQ found in the current study, in the future it will be necessary to tease apart abilities and traits that are specific to the depictive aspects of artistic functioning and those that relate to more general abilities like creative reasoning.…”

Individual differences as antecedents of leader behavior: Towards an understanding of multi-level outcomes

“…For instance, a recent study on military leaders suggests that IQ is a significant predictor of leadership performance in terms of both domestic and cross-border responsibilities (Rockstuhl, Seiler, Ang, van Dyne, & Annen, 2011). Another study examines presidents of the United States, and finds a relationship between estimations of IQ and leadership performance (Simonton, 2006). Yet another study on middle managers finds that the effect of IQ on leadership performance is even stronger than that of any personality trait or of emotional intelligence (Cavazotte, Moreno, & Hickmann, 2012).…”

Investigating the Theoretical Structure of Deliberative Democratic Leadership

“…From literature review, Simonton had described deliberative leadership as the personality of successful American President in deliberative attitude in political action (Simonton, 1986(Simonton, , 1987(Simonton, , 1988(Simonton, , 2006. Gerald also defined the deliberative leadership as deliberative body as student council lead the leadership in school governance (Gerard, 2003).…”