Evolutionary personality theorists have also argued that unlike cognitive abilities, traits tend to be differentially selective in different environments – which would subject traits to different evolutionary mechanisms than ‘g’ (Denissen & Penke, 2009). For instance, personality researchers drawing on evolutionary theory have argued that even relatively high levels of certain dimensions of personality that seem so problematic in contemporary society (such as neuroticism; see Lahey, 2009) can confer benefits for survival and reproduction in some specific environments (see e.g., Nettle, 2006). Likewise, whereas ‘g’ is a robust correlate of attributes linked to fitness (e.g., longevity, mate preferences, reproductive success, and adaptation to environmental disruption), different personality traits seem to have more specific connections to behaviors linked with fitness (Ferguson et al., 2011). For example, Conscientiousness predicts longevity (Roberts et al., 2007), Neuroticism predicts adaption to stress (Lahey, 2009), and Extraversion predicts exploratory tendencies (see e.g., Nettle, 2011). Finally, whereas in cognitive abilities the higher levels of the hierarchy are more heritable than the lower levels (Friedman et al., 2008), this is not the case in personality, where the heritability of the GFP (Rushton, Bons, & Hur, 2008) is in the range of heritability estimates for lower order traits.
