The personality system relies on the individual's mental abilities -- a person's intelligences, creativity, and other mental skills and aptitudes -- to function. Mental abilities are crucial to personality's performance. But what are these mental abilities? Here is a description of some of them.
Cognitive Intelligences
The first intelligences to be examined were the cognitive intelligences -- verbal/propositional intelligence, perceptual-organizational intelligence, and the like. Here are some web sites on those...
Intelligences -- This web site, begun by Professor Jonathan Plucker, provides a variety of contemporary looks at the field of intelligence.
Hot Intelligences (Emotional Intelligence; Social Intelligence)
In addition to the cognitive intelligences, hot intelligences form a key set of abilities the individual can draw on. Hot intelligences concern the ability to validly manipulate information that is personally very relevant and important. These include emotional and social intelligences, among others.
Emotional Intelligence -- This is a site on emotional intelligence maintained by John D. Mayer. The site concerns what emotional intelligence is, how it is measured, and how it works.
Creativity
Another important skill set involves creativity. Creativity involves the capacity to come up with new ideas that are both original and appropriate. The new, original ideas are sometimes referred to as divergent ideas -- in that the ideas have originated from a different (e.g., divergent) thought process than the customary methods others have used. The ideas, though, must also be appropriate; that is, many ideas that are different also are wrong, impractical, or simply don’t fit. True creativity involves coming up with new ideas that are practical and useful in some fashion.
Some links for creativity:
Some discussion of creativity occurs on the home page of a creativity studies program at Buffalo State University, here:
http://www.buffalostate.edu/centers/creativity/General/Why_study.html
Another interesting page is provided by the Australian Airforce, here:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-thkg.htm
A nice article on some additional theories of creativity, by Jonathan S. Byrd, can be found here:
http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/byrd.html
Creativity is also one of the three aspects of intelligence considered in Robert J. Sternberg's triarchic intelligence theory (see here:)
http://tip.psychology.org/stern.html