So if my factor model is correct, I could expect the correlations to follow a pattern as shown below.
However, questions 1 and 4 -measuring possibly unrelated traits- will not necessarily correlate. The same reasoning goes for questions 4, 5 and 6: if they really measure “the same thing” they'll probably correlate highly. Now, if questions 1, 2 and 3 all measure numeric IQ, then the Pearson correlations among these items should be substantial: respondents with high numeric IQ will typically score high on all 3 questions and reversely.
