Working memory, general intelligence, and job performance

The relationships between working memory and various cognitive abilities, including general intelligence, were investigated, as was the relationship between working memory and job performance. Measures of working memory, general intelligence and a number of specific cognitive abilities were administered and job performance information was collected as part of a selection measure validation project. Unlike virtually all other investigations of working memory, the data for the current project were gathered in an applied setting rather than an experimental setting (e.g., a laboratory or health care setting). The current investigation obtained correlations between working memory and traditional cognitive ability measures similar to those observed in previous studies. In addition, the investigation obtained information on relationships between working memory and job performance, relationships that until now have gone largely unexplored. Correlations between measures of working memory and measures of job performance were nearly as high as those between measures of general intelligence and job performance, with working memory measures having a smaller negative impact on members of protected classes. The results of the project provided support for the potential usefulness of working memory measures for meeting industrial-organizational psychology needs and succeeded in generalizing working memory results to an applied setting.