General knowledge is information that has been accumulated over time through various mediums. It excludes highly specialized learning that can only be obtained with extensive training and information confined to a single medium. General knowledge is an important component of crystallized intelligence. It is strongly associated with general intelligence and with openness to experience.

Studies have found that people who are highly knowledgeable in a particular domain tend to be knowledgeable in many. General knowledge is thought to be supported by long-term semantic memory ability. General knowledge also supports schemata for textual understanding.