Intelligence, Experience, and Deliberate Practice in Personnel Selection - An Integrative Meta-Analytic Review and Computational Simulation

Abstract

This paper presents an integrative review and a computational simulation study synthesizing a century of Industrial and Organizational Psychology research. Integrating meta-analytic findings (Schmidt& Hunter, 1998; Sackett et al., 2022), causal path analyses (Hunter, 1983), and dynamic mathematicalmodeling, this study systematically evaluates the predictive validity of General Mental Ability (GMA),experience, and deliberate practice. The results strongly indicate that GMA remains the single mostrobust and universal predictor of performance, even after correcting for statistical artifacts. We criticallyre-examine the "10,000-hour rule," providing evidence that deliberate practice, while necessary, explains only 30–34% of the variance in elite expertise, with cognitive capacity determining individual natural ceilings. The novel contribution of this study lies in the application of a mathematically transparentinteraction model (P(t) = Pmax ×(1−e−λt)) to quantify specific IQ thresholds required to compensatefor experience deficits across 50 distinct occupational categories. The paper concludes with strategic recommendations for implementing evidence-based selection systems and acknowledges criticallimitations requiring future empirical validation.