A comparative study of the general factor of personality in Jewish and non-Jewish populations

It was hypothesized that Jews would have a personality profile characterized by high levels of the general factor of personality (GFP). Analyses based on three large samples supported this hypothesis. Additionally , the Jewish/non-Jewish group difference on personality traits exhibited a Jensen Effect with the largest difference between groups being on the traits that had the highest loadings on the GFP. Future research should focus on investigating how the high Jewish GFP is manifested in behavioral and social outcomes. The high levels of achievement and eminence attained by Jews has been a subject of intense interest. Quite often differential psychologists have attributed this success to the high average level of general intelligence exhibited by Jews. Ashkenazi Jewish IQ estimates range from one half to a full standard deviation above the Consistent with the idea that the high levels of Jewish intelligence are substantive, two recent analyses found Jen-for example, that the Jewish/non-Jewish White difference is most pronounced on cognitive tests that load highly on the g factor. However, the examination of Jewish success has often focused on the realms of intellectual achievement, using metrics like the percentage of Nobel prizes won to gauge accomplishmentplishment is also evident in pursuits less dependent just upon cog-nitive ability (Congressional Research Service, 2014). In a recent analysis of admissions to elite academic institutions Unz (2012) showed that Jews were enrolled in numbers well above what would be predicted solely on academic merit (see Appendices C–F), suggesting that Jewish success, even academic success, should be attributable to some factor beyond that of cognitive ability. An obvious candidate for the source of group differences is personality. Compared with intelligence, very little work has been conducted into understanding the personality differences between Jews and other groups. Cochran et al. (2006) argue that Jewish intelligence evolved as Jews found an economic-social niche in cognitively demanding professions such as trade and finance (with achievement in these professions leading to increased reproductive success), while farming remained the primary occupation of other groups. In comparison to farming, success in trade and finance also involves superior interpersonal skills suggesting that personality traits associated with heightened social effectiveness could also have been selected. It has also been argued that the personality traits of Jews are partly constituted by a group-level orientation towards slow life history strategy (e.g. MacDonald, 1994). Life history is characterized by a continuum of physiological and psychological variables, with a …