Animal personality has been shown to predict many behavioral responses across taxa, but the relationship between personality and performance on cognitive tasks remains unclear. To address this gap, we investigated whether personality predicted problem-solving performance and learning in captive Asian and African savanna elephants. We leveraged 3 novel problem-solving tasks to assess success rate, latency to touch the apparatus, exploratory diversity (the number of different behaviors exhibited toward the task), work time (the proportion of time working on the tasks), and latency to solve. To measure multiple different personality traits, such as boldness, activity, aggressiveness, curiosity, and sociability, across contexts, we carried out novel object presentations, behavioral coding through observations, and trait rating through surveys with zookeepers. We found evidence of personality through behavioral observations and surveys, but not through novel object testing. Aggressiveness and activity were important predictors of problem solving, but this was task-dependent, and the traits we measured did not significantly predict learning. Elephants solved 2 out of 3 tasks faster over time, but they did not vary their latency to touch, exploratory diversity, or work time. We discuss our results in terms of task difficulty and previous work on personality in elephants. Results from this study lay the foundation for future work connecting individual variation in personality to cognitive performance in elephants. In addition, for zoo-housed animals, individual differences research could inform enrichment and welfare decisions as well as conservation strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Consistent individual differences in behaviour across time or contexts (i.e. personality types) have been found in many species and have implications for fitness. Likewise, individual variation in cognitive abilities has been shown to impact fitness. Cognition and personality are complex, multidimensional traits. However, previous work has generally examined the connection between a single personality trait and a single cognitive ability, yielding equivocal results. Links between personality and cognitive ability suggest that behavioural traits coevolved and highlight their nuanced connections. Here we examined individuals' performance on multiple personality tests and repeated problem-solving tests (each measuring innovative performance). We assessed behavioural traits (dominance, boldness, activity, risk-taking, aggressiveness and obstinacy) in 41 captive zebra finches. Birds' scores for boldness and obstinacy were consistent over two years. We also examined whether personality correlated with problem-solving performance on repeated tests. Our results indicate that neophobia, dominance and obstinacy were related to successful solving, and less dominant, more obstinate birds solved the tasks quicker on average. Our results indicate the importance of examining multiple measures over a long period. Future work that identifies links between personality and innovation in non-model organisms may elucidate the coevolution of these two forms of individual differences.