How Does Cognitive Capability and Personality Influence Problem Solving in Coding Interview Puzzles?

Software engineering involves cognitively demanding activities impacted by individual differences. We investigate how cognitive capability and personality traits are associated with software problem solving accuracy. We assessed cognitive capability using Baddeley's three-minute grammatical reasoning test. Personality was measured using the IPIP-NEO-50 test. Eighty participants (40 software practitioners and 40 software engineering students) completed these two tests with nine interview-style problem solving tasks, comprising six coding-related and three logical-reasoning questions. Our practitioners achieved slightly higher grammatical reasoning accuracy than students, although this difference was not statistically significant. Students achieved higher accuracy on the coding and logical-reasoning tasks. For all, grammatical reasoning accuracy was positively correlated with problem solving accuracy, indicating that individuals with higher reasoning accuracy tended to perform better on applied problem solving tasks. Conscientiousness was the strongest personality-related association, positively correlated with both grammatical reasoning and problem solving accuracy. Openness to experience was also positively correlated with grammatical reasoning and problem solving accuracy. Neuroticism showed a small negative correlation with problem solving accuracy and weak negative correlation with grammatical reasoning accuracy. Practical implications for education and industry include integrating structured reasoning tasks in curricula, and considering the interplay of personality and cognition in recruitment and role allocation.