Intelligence, Personality, and Academic Success in Senior Secondary Students: An Integrative Review and Exploratory Career-Preference Data Audit

Abstract

Academic success in senior secondary education is shaped by the interaction of cognitive resources, personality, self-regulation, and educational context. This paper examines the literature-derived question of whether personality may condition the relationship between intelligence and academic success, while separating that question from the narrower claims supported by a supplied student workbook. The paper combines a focused narrative/integrative review of intelligence, the Big Five, adolescent achievement, intelligence–personality interaction, and the debate surrounding multiple intelligences with a reproducible audit of 140 senior-secondary student records. The workbook contains seven MI-profile scores—used here as exploratory profile variables rather than validated measures of general intelligence—five personality scores, and seven preferred-career categories. It contains no direct academic-success measure and no intelligence-by-personality interaction terms; moderation therefore cannot be estimated. Reanalysis identified a gender–career association, χ²(6) = 21.11, p = .0018, Cramér’s V = .388; the association remained detectable in a fixed-margin Monte Carlo sensitivity test (p = .000875). The largest standardized group differences were observed for conscientiousness by gender (d = −0.97) and openness by gender (d = −0.76). Exploratory multinomial models yielded in-sample McFadden pseudo-R² values of .321 and .371, but these values are not validated predictive performance. The empirical findings describe associations involving preferred career categories, not academic achievement and not moderation. The paper’s central contribution is an explicit alignment of the research question, construct definitions, available variables, statistical models, and claims