Data from: Chimpanzee intellect: personality, performance and motivation with touchscreen tasks

Human intellect is characterized by intercorrelated psychological domains, including intelligence, academic performance and personality. Higher openness is associated with higher intelligence and better academic performance, yet high performance among individuals is itself attributable to intelligence, not openness. High conscientiousness individuals, although not necessarily more intelligent, are better performers. Work with other species is not as extensive, yet animals display similar relationships between exploration- and persistence-related personality traits and performance on cognitive tasks. However, previous studies linking cognition and personality have not tracked learning, performance and dropout over time—three crucial elements of cognitive performance. We conducted three participatory experiments with touchscreen cognitive tasks among 19 zoo-housed chimpanzees, whose personalities were assessed 3 years prior to the study. Performance and participation were recorded across experiments. High conscientiousness chimpanzees participated more, dropped out less and performed better, but their performance could be explained by their experience with the task. High openness chimpanzees tended to be more interested, perform better and continue to participate when not rewarded with food. Our results demonstrate that chimpanzees, like humans, possess broad intellectual capacities that are affected by their personalities.

人类智力以多个相互关联的心理领域为核心特征，涵盖智力、学业表现与人格特质。更高的开放性与更优的智力水平及学业表现呈正相关，但个体的优异表现本身可归因于智力而非开放性。高尽责性个体虽未必具备更高智力，却往往能取得更出色的任务表现。尽管针对其他物种的相关研究尚不够广泛，但动物同样展现出与探索、坚持相关的人格特质，以及认知任务表现之间的相似关联。然而，过往关联认知与人格的研究并未长期追踪学习、表现与退出行为这三大认知表现的核心要素。本研究针对19只圈养于动物园的黑猩猩开展了三项触摸屏认知任务实验，这些黑猩猩的人格特质已于实验开展三年前完成评估。实验全程记录了被试的任务表现与参与情况。研究结果显示，高尽责性的黑猩猩参与度更高、退出率更低且任务表现更优，但其表现可通过其任务经验得到解释；高开放性的黑猩猩往往表现出更强的任务兴趣，在未获得食物奖励时仍能保持更优表现并持续参与任务。本研究结果表明，与人类相似，黑猩猩同样拥有广泛的智力能力，且其智力表现会受到人格特质的影响。