The Validity of General Cognitive Ability Predicting Job-Specific Performance Is Stable Across Different Levels of Job Experience

Decades of research in industrial-organizational psychology have established that measures of general cognitive ability (g) consistently and positively predict job-specific performance to a statistically and practically significant degree across jobs. But is the validity of g stable across different levels of job experience? The present study addresses this question using historical large-scale data across 31 diverse military occupations from the Joint-Service Job Performance Measurement/Enlistment Standards Project (N = 10,088). Across all jobs, results of our meta-analysis find near-zero interactions between Armed Forces Qualification Test score (a composite of math and verbal scores) and time in service when predicting job-specific performance. This finding supports the validity of g for predicting job-specific performance even with increasing job experience and provides no evidence for diminishing validity of g. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, along with directions for personnel selection research and practice.