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I’d be very interested to know who was studied for those results.

It’s easy to imagine that people at the highest end simply weren’t available to be selected for the study.

Likely not the research referenced by the GP, but this paper: http://web.econ.ku.dk/gensowski/research/Terman/Terman.pdf finds that Conscientiousness, IQ, and Extraversion are correlated with increased income (for men at least) among the Terman survey.

If I'm summarizing correctly, the Terman survey includes a group of 856 boys and 672 girls born around 1910 and selected in 1921-1922 who were followed until 1991.

Looking at that study, the high end simply wasn’t included. It seemed to just cover wage earners and professional salaried workers.

I also don't have a reference right now, but I would assume they've taken a thousand of random people and ran some statistical analysis on that sample.

Chances of someone from this thousand people being among the highest end are indeed pretty small.

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