Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness describes how you go after goals: how organized, persistent and careful you are, and how much self-control you bring to tasks you would rather avoid. People who score high plan ahead and finish what they start. People who score low keep their options open, decide in the moment and handle a sudden change of plan without fuss.

The six facets

In the IPIP-NEO-120 Conscientiousness is made up of six facets (Johnson, 2014):

• Self-efficacy: confidence that you can get things done.
• Orderliness: liking tidiness, lists and a place for everything.
• Dutifulness: keeping promises and following rules you agreed to.
• Achievement-striving: setting high goals and working hard for them.
• Self-discipline: starting and finishing tasks even when they are dull.
• Cautiousness: thinking before acting rather than on impulse.

Orderliness and the rest can separate. Researchers distinguish an Industriousness aspect (effort, discipline, drive) from an Orderliness aspect (neatness, routine) (DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson, 2007). A chaotic desk and a reliable deadline record can belong to the same person.

High and low in everyday life

Toward the high end, you would rather plan the trip down to the train times than decide on the platform. Deadlines rarely surprise you and people hand you the jobs that must not slip. The cost is rigidity: an unplanned afternoon can feel uncomfortable, and high standards can turn into finishing everything except the rest you needed.

Toward the low end, you start from the moment rather than the plan. You adapt quickly when things change, and you are good company on a trip that goes off script. The cost shows in the tasks nobody enjoys: forms, bills, the last ten percent of a project, which slide until they become urgent.

What the research links it to

Work. In a classic meta-analysis, Conscientiousness was the only Big Five trait that predicted job performance in every occupational group studied, with a corrected correlation of about .2 (Barrick and Mount, 1991). Later reviews have kept that picture. A correlation of .2 is useful on average and leaves wide room for individual exceptions.

School and university. Across studies, Conscientiousness correlates with grades at about .2. At university its link is nearly as strong as that of intelligence, and largely independent of it (Poropat, 2009).

Health. People higher in Conscientiousness smoke less, drink less heavily, drive more safely and exercise more on average (Bogg and Roberts, 2004). Across long-term studies, Conscientiousness predicts a longer life about as well as socioeconomic status does (Roberts et al., 2007).

Relationships. Partners of people higher in Conscientiousness report somewhat more satisfaction with the relationship, a smaller effect than that of low Neuroticism (Malouff et al., 2010).

Age. Conscientiousness dips in early adolescence (Soto et al., 2011) and then rises through adulthood, most of all between 20 and 40 (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer, 2006).

A common misreading

Because it predicts so much, Conscientiousness is easy to treat as a virtue score. That reading misses the costs. In creative fields the picture reverses: artists tend to score lower on Conscientiousness than non-artists (Feist, 1998). Spontaneity and tolerance for mess help in work where the plan has to be invented as you go.