Measures Of Conscientiousness Research Articles

The importance of early conscientiousness for socio-economic outcomes: evidence from the British Cohort Study

This research estimates models of the importance of conscientiousness for socio-economic outcomes. We use measures of conscientiousness at age 16 to explain adult wages and other outcomes, such as employment, education, health, and savings behaviour. We use several waves from the 1970 British Cohort Study. Our estimates suggest a significant and sizeable correlation between early conscientiousness and adult outcomes. Measurement error is corrected for by applying IV techniques, errors-in-variables estimators, and structural equation modelling. Investigation of the lower-order structure of conscientiousness suggests that facets related to reliability, decisiveness, and impulse control are most strongly correlated with outcomes. We also investigate changes in early conscientiousness and find that persons who experience declines in the personality distribution between the ages 10 and 16 seem to be worse off in terms of a variety of socio-economic outcomes.

Conscientiousness, dementia related pathology, and trajectories of cognitive aging.

The study aim was to determine the contribution of dementia related pathologies to the association of conscientiousness with late-life cognitive health. At enrollment in 2 longitudinal clinical-pathologic cohort studies, 309 older individuals without cognitive impairment completed a standard conscientiousness measure. Annually thereafter, they completed a battery of 17 cognitive tests. On death, they underwent a uniform neuropathologic examination from which measures of neurofibrillary tangles, Lewy bodies, chronic gross cerebral infarction, and hippocampal sclerosis were derived. The relation of conscientiousness and the neuropathologic markers to cognitive decline was assessed in mixed-effects change point models to accommodate nonlinear cognitive decline. During a mean of 10.7 years of follow-up, annual decline on a composite measure of global cognition (baseline M = 0.082, SD = 0.499) was gradual (estimated M = -0.036, 95% CI [-0.046, -0.025]) until a mean of 3.2 years before death (95% CI [-3.6, -2.8]) when it accelerated to a mean annual loss of 0.369 unit (95% CI [-0.426, -0.317]), a tenfold increase. Higher conscientiousness (baseline M = 33.6, SD = 5.1) was associated with slower terminal decline (estimate = 0.064, 95% CI [0.024, 0.103]) but not preterminal decline (estimate = 0.005, 95% CI [-0.003, 0.013]). After adjustment for neuropathologic burden, conscientiousness was still related to terminal decline (estimate = 0.057, 95% CI [0.019, 0.094]) and accounted for 4% of the variance in terminal slopes. In addition, the association of neocortical Lewy bodies with terminal cognitive decline was attenuated in those with higher conscientiousness. The results suggest that higher conscientiousness is protective of late-life cognitive health.

Specificity Matters: Criterion-Related Validity of Contextualized and Facet Measures of Conscientiousness in Predicting College Student Performance

To enhance the predictive validity of self-report personality measures, 2 distinct ways of increasing specificity of personality measures have been proposed in the literature—contextual specificity (i.e., providing a contextual referent) and content specificity (i.e., focusing on more specific constructs such as the Big Five facets). This study extends this line of research by examining whether there is an optimal way to configure, align, or integrate contextual and content specificity using measures of conscientiousness to predict college student success. A sample of 478 undergraduate students completed 4 measures of conscientiousness that varied in the level of content and contextual specificity. These forms of specificity were crossed to yield 4 distinct measures of conscientiousness. We then evaluated and compared the relative importance and the incremental importance of these different measures in the prediction of academic success. Superior predictive validity was found for both contextualized and facet measures of conscientiousness compared to a measure of global conscientiousness in predicting grade-point average and a broader behavioral criterion of student performance. When contextual and content specificity approaches were compared and combined, we observed the strongest predictive validity when the level of specificity is appropriately matched between predictor and criterion.

Specifying Associations Between Conscientiousness and Executive Functioning: Mental Set Shifting, Not Prepotent Response Inhibition or Working Memory Updating.

Conscientiousness is characterized by self-control, organization, and goal orientation and is positively related to a number of health and professional outcomes. Thus, it is commonly suggested that conscientiousness should be related to superior executive functioning (EF) abilities, especially prepotent response inhibition. However, little empirical support for this notion has emerged, perhaps due to oversimplified and underspecified modeling of EF. The current study sought to fill this gap by testing relations between conscientiousness and three facets of EF using a nested factors latent variable approach. Participants (N = 420; Mage = 22.5; 50% male; 91% Caucasian) completed a measure of conscientiousness and nine EF tasks designed to tap three related yet distinguishable facets of EF: working memory updating, mental set shifting, and prepotent response inhibition. Structural equation models showed that conscientiousness is positively associated with the EF facet of mental set shifting but not response inhibition or working memory updating. Despite the common notion that conscientiousness is associated with cognitive abilities related to rigid control over impulses (i.e., inhibition), the current results suggest the cognitive ability most associated with conscientiousness is characterized by flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing environmental contingencies and task demands.

Conscientiousness is modified by genetic variation in catechol-O-methyltransferase to reduce symptom complaints in IBS patients.

BackgroundAttention to and perception of physical sensations and somatic states can significantly influence reporting of complaints and symptoms in the context of clinical care and randomized trials. Although anxiety and high neuroticism are known to increase the frequency and severity of complaints, it is not known if other personality dimensions or genes associated with cognitive function or sympathetic tone can influence complaints. Genetic variation in catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) is associated with anxiety, personality, pain, and response to placebo treatment. We hypothesized that the association of complaint reporting with personality might be modified by variation in the COMT val158met genotype.MethodsWe administered a standard 25-item complaint survey weekly over 3-weeks to a convenience sample of 187 irritable bowel syndrome patients enrolled in a placebo intervention trial and conducted a repeated measures analysis.ResultsWe found that complaint severity rating, our primary outcome, was negatively associated with the personality measures of conscientiousness (β = −0.31 SE 0.11, P = 0.003) and agreeableness (β = −0.38 SE 0.12, P = 0.002) and was positively associated with neuroticism (β = 0.24 SE 0.09, P = 0.005) and anxiety (β = 0.48 SE 0.09, P < 0.0001). We also found a significant interaction effect of COMT met alleles (β = −32.5 SE 14.1, P = 0.021). in patients genotyped for COMT val158met (N = 87) specifically COMT × conscientiousness (β = 0.73 SE 0.26, P = 0.0042) and COMT × anxiety (β = −0.42 SE 0.16, P = 0.0078) interaction effects.ConclusionThese findings potentially broaden our understanding of the factors underlying clinical complaints to include the personality dimension of conscientiousness and its modification by COMT.

When You Say Nothing at All: The Predictive Power of Student Effort on Surveys

Character traits and noncognitive skills are important for human capital development and long-run life outcomes. Research in economics and psychology now shows this clearly. But research into the exact determinants of noncognitive skills have been slowed by a common data limitation: most large-scale datasets do not contain adequate measures of noncognitive skills.This is a particularly acute problem in education policy evaluation. We demonstrate that there are important latent data within any survey dataset that can be used as proxy measures of noncognitive skills. Specifically, we examine the amount of conscientious effort that students exhibit on surveys, as measured by their item response rates. We use six nationally representative, longitudinal surveys of American youth. We find that the percentage of questions left unanswered during the baseline year, when respondents were adolescents, is a significant predictor of later-life outcomes. Respondents with higher item response rates are more likely to attain higher levels of education. The pattern of findings gives compelling reasons to view item response rates as a promising behavioral measure of noncognitive skills for use in future research in education. We posit that response rates are a partial measure of conscientiousness, though additional research from the field of psychology is required to determine what exact noncognitive skills are being captured by item response rates.

Perceived Social Support Predicts Increased Conscientiousness During Older Adulthood

This study examined whether perceived social support predicted adaptive personality change in older adulthood, focusing on the trait of conscientiousness. We tested this hypothesis both at the broad domain level and with respect to the specific lower order facets that comprise conscientiousness: order, self-control, industriousness, responsibility, and traditionalism. A sample of 143 older adults (aged 60-91) completed measures of conscientiousness and social support during 2 assessments 7 months apart. Social support and conscientiousness were positively correlated among older adults. Moreover, older adults who perceived greater social support at baseline were more likely to gain in conscientiousness over time. The magnitude of this effect was relatively similar across the order, self-control, and industriousness facets. Perceived social support provides multiple benefits later in life, and the current results add to this literature by showing that it also promotes conscientiousness. As conscientiousness is linked to a variety of positive outcomes later in life, including health, future research should examine whether conscientiousness change may be an important mechanism through which social support enhances resilience in older adulthood.

The Importance of Early Conscientiousness for Socio-Economic Outcomes: Evidence from the British Cohort Study

This research estimates models of the importance of conscientiousness for socio-economic outcomes. We use measures of conscientiousness at age 16 to explain adult wages and other outcomes, such as crime, health and savings behaviour. We use several waves from the 1970 British Cohort Study. Our estimates suggest a significant and sizeable correlation between early conscientiousness and adult outcomes. Measurement error is corrected for by applying IV-techniques, errors-in-variables estimators and structural equation modelling. Investigation of the lower-order structure of conscientiousness suggests that facets related to reliability, decisiveness and impulse control are most strongly correlated with outcomes. We also investigate changes in early conscientiousness and find that persons who experience declines in the personality distribution between the ages 10 and 16 seem to be worse off in terms of a variety of socio-economic outcomes.

The Five-Factor Model, forced-choice personality inventories and performance: A comprehensive meta-analysis of academic and occupational validity studies

This article reports a comprehensive meta-analysis of the criterion-oriented validity of the Big Five personality dimensions assessed with forced-choice (FC) inventories. Six criteria (i.e., performance ratings, training proficiency, productivity, grade-point average, global occupational performance, and global academic performance) and three types of FC scores (i.e., normative, quasi-ipsative, and ipsative) served for grouping the validity coefficients. Globally, the results showed that the Big Five assessed with FC measures have similar or slightly higher validity than the Big Five assessed with single-stimulus (SS) personality inventories. Quasi-ipsative measures of conscientiousness (K = 44, N = 8794, ρ = .40) are found to be better predictors of job performance than normative and ipsative measures. FC inventories also showed similar reliability coefficients to SS inventories. Implications of the findings for theory and practice in academic and personnel decisions are discussed, and future research is suggested.

Do students learn to be more conscientious at medical school?

BackgroundProfessionalism in medical students is not only difficult to define but difficult to teach and measure. As negative behaviour in medical students is associated with post-graduate disciplinary action it would be useful to have a model whereby unprofessional behaviour at the undergraduate level can easily be identified to permit appropriate intervention. We have previously developed a scalar measure of conscientiousness, the Conscientiousness Index (CI), which positively correlates to estimates of professional behaviour in undergraduate medical students. By comparing CI points awarded in year 1 and year 2 of study we were able to use the CI model to determine whether teaching and clinical exposure had any effect on students’ conscientiousness.MethodsCI points were collected by administrative staff from 3 successive cohorts of students in years 1 and 2 of study. Points were awarded to students for activities such as submission of immunisation status and criminal record checks, submission of summative assignments by a specified date and attendance at compulsory teaching sessions. CI points were then converted to a percentage of maximal possible scores (CI %) to permit direct comparison between years 1 and 2 of study.ResultsCI % scores were generally high with each year of study for each cohort showing negatively skewed normal distributions with peaks > 89%. There was a high degree of correlation of CI % scores between year 1 and year 2 of study for each cohort alone and when cohort data was combined. When the change in CI % from year 1 to year 2 for all students was compared there was no significant difference in conscientiousness observed.ConclusionsWe have provided evidence that use of a CI model in undergraduate medical students provides a reliable measure of conscientiousness that is easy to implement. Importantly this study shows that measurement of conscientiousness by the CI model in medical students does not change between years 1 and 2 study suggesting that it is a stable characteristic and not modified by teaching and clinical exposure.

Cognitive ability and health-related behaviors during adolescence: A prospective study across five years

Longitudinal research on the links between intelligence and health behaviors among adolescents is rare. We report longitudinal data in which we assessed the relationships between intelligence as assessed in Grade 7 and consequential health outcomes in Grade 11. The mean age of respondents (N=420; 188 males, 232 females) was 12.30years (SD=0.49) in Grade 7and 16.17years (SD=0.45) in Grade 11. They completed standardized verbal and numerical ability tests and a measure of conscientiousness in Grade 7 and health related questions in Grade 11. Results indicated that higher intelligence was associated with a number of healthy behaviors including delay in onset of cigarette smoking. Intelligence significantly predicted less time spent watching TV, lower physical exercise, and lower consumption of stimulant drinks. Covariate analyses showed that general intelligence predicted health outcomes after controlling for conscientiousness, socio-economic status, and gender.

Conscientiousness and stress exposure and reactivity: a prospective study of adolescent females

Conscientiousness is associated with health, but the mechanisms remain poorly understood. To explore the role that stress might play, this study examined whether conscientiousness was associated with exposure and reactivity to life stress. This study followed 133 adolescent women every 6months for 2.5years. Participants completed a baseline measure of conscientiousness, and at each visit underwent a structured interview to catalogue episodic and chronic stress and had blood drawn to assess inflammatory processes. Participants higher in conscientiousness experienced fewer self-dependent episodic stressors and less academic and interpersonal chronic stress throughout the study. However, at times when they experienced higher levels of chronic interpersonal stress, they became more resistant to glucocorticoids. Higher levels of conscientiousness may protect adolescent women from exposure to certain stressors. However, when stress occurs, highly conscientious individuals may become more resistant to glucocorticoids, increasing their risk for processes that influence inflammatory conditions.

Assessing inconsistent responding in E and N measures: An application of person-fit analysis in personality

Person-fit analysis assesses the fit of an IRT model at the level of each respondent. This type of assessment allows potentially inconsistent respondents to be detected, and is very relevant in both clinical assessment and validity studies. However, person fit is rarely assessed in IRT-based personality applications. This study assessed person fit in two datasets in which a normal-range personality measure – Neuroticism in one case and Extraversion in the other – had been administered under standard conditions. At the illustrative level, the study shows how person-fit analysis can be performed and how it can be useful in personality measurement. At the substantive level it assesses the frequency and sources of individual misfit. Idiosyncratic interpretation of groups of items, low person reliability, and deliberate sabotaging were identified as sources of misfit. Person-fit measures showed a moderate degree of temporal stability and a significant correlation with a Conscientiousness measure.

Conscientiousness predicts greater recovery from negative emotion.

Greater levels of conscientiousness have been associated with lower levels of negative affect. We focus on one mechanism through which conscientiousness may decrease negative affect: effective emotion regulation, as reflected by greater recovery from negative stimuli. In 273 adults who were 35-85 years old, we collected self-report measures of personality including conscientiousness and its self-control facet, followed on average 2 years later by psychophysiological measures of emotional reactivity and recovery. Among middle-aged adults (35-65 years old), the measures of conscientiousness and self-control predicted greater recovery from, but not reactivity to, negative emotional stimuli. The effect of conscientiousness and self-control on recovery was not driven by other personality variables or by greater task adherence on the part of high conscientiousness individuals. In addition, the effect was specific to negative emotional stimuli and did not hold for neutral or positive emotional stimuli.

Images of the self: prediction of peer-evaluations of one's personality, using implicit and explicit self-assessments

The present research analyses relations between explicit, implicit and peer-assessment of two personality variables: Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Students (N = 43) were evaluated by their peers on 32 adjectives relevant for the two personality dimensions. In addition, they completed the IPIP-50 personality questionnaire and the Semantic Misattribution Procedure. Results indicate significant correlations between explicit and peer evaluations of Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Only the implicit measure of Conscientiousness correlated with its peer evaluation. Regression analyses indicated that peer evaluations of both traits are predicted only by the explicit measures of personality, while the implicit measures remained insignificant as predictors.

The relationship between spirituality and religiosity on psychological outcomes in adolescents and emerging adults: A meta-analytic review

The present study used meta-analytic techniques to examine the association between spirituality and religiosity (S/R) and psychological outcomes in adolescents and emerging adults. The outcome measures of risk behavior, depression, well-being, self-esteem, and personality were examined with respect to the influence of S/R across 75 independent studies encompassing 66,273 adolescents and emerging adults extracted from electronic databases between 1990 and 2010. Results showed significant main effect sizes of S/R with several outcomes: risk behavior, −.17; depression, −.11; well-being, .16; self-esteem, .11; and the personality measures of Conscientiousness, .19; Agreeableness, .18; Openness, .14. Moderating effects were found for age, race, and type of S/R measure. Results show that S/R has a positive effect on psychological outcomes in adolescents and emerging adults. Possible explanations and implications of these results are discussed.

Conscientiousness and longevity: an examination of possible mediators.

Conscientious individuals tend to experience a number of health benefits, not the least of which being greater longevity. However, it remains an open question as to why this link with longevity occurs. The current study tested two possible mediators (physical health and cognitive functioning) of the link between conscientiousness and longevity. We tested these mediators using a 10-year longitudinal sample (N = 512), a subset of the long-running Health and Retirement Study of aging adults. Measures included an adjective-rating measure of conscientiousness, self-reported health conditions, and three measures of cognitive functioning (word recall, delayed recall, and vocabulary) included in the 1996 wave of the HRS study. Our results found that conscientiousness significantly predicted greater longevity, even in a model including the two proposed mediator variables, gender, age, and years of education. Moreover, cognitive functioning appears to partially mediate this relationship. This study replicates previous research showing that conscientious individuals tend to lead longer lives, and provides further insight into why this effect occurs. In addition, it underscores the importance of measurement considerations.

Evaluating professionalism in medical undergraduates using selected response questions: findings from an item response modelling study

BackgroundProfessionalism is a difficult construct to define in medical students but aspects of this concept may be important in predicting the risk of postgraduate misconduct. For this reason attempts are being made to evaluate medical students' professionalism. This study investigated the psychometric properties of Selected Response Questions (SRQs) relating to the theme of professional conduct and ethics comparing them with two sets of control items: those testing pure knowledge of anatomy, and; items evaluating the ability to integrate and apply knowledge ("skills"). The performance of students on the SRQs was also compared with two external measures estimating aspects of professionalism in students; peer ratings of professionalism and their Conscientiousness Index, an objective measure of behaviours at medical school.MethodsItem Response Theory (IRT) was used to analyse both question and student performance for SRQs relating to knowledge of professionalism, pure anatomy and skills. The relative difficulties, discrimination and 'guessabilities' of each theme of question were compared with each other using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Student performance on each topic was compared with the measures of conscientiousness and professionalism using parametric and non-parametric tests as appropriate. A post-hoc analysis of power for the IRT modelling was conducted using a Monte Carlo simulation.ResultsProfessionalism items were less difficult compared to the anatomy and skills SRQs, poorer at discriminating between candidates and more erratically answered when compared to anatomy questions. Moreover professionalism item performance was uncorrelated with the standardised Conscientiousness Index scores (rho = 0.009, p = 0.90). In contrast there were modest but significant correlations between standardised Conscientiousness Index scores and performance at anatomy items (rho = 0.20, p = 0.006) though not skills (rho = .11, p = .1). Likewise, students with high peer ratings for professionalism had superior performance on anatomy SRQs but not professionalism themed questions. A trend of borderline significance (p = .07) was observed for performance on skills SRQs and professionalism nomination status.ConclusionsSRQs related to professionalism are likely to have relatively poor psychometric properties and lack associations with other constructs associated with undergraduate professional behaviour. The findings suggest that such questions should not be included in undergraduate examinations and may raise issues with the introduction of Situational Judgement Tests into Foundation Years selection.

Conscientiousness and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

A dimensional perspective on personality disorder hypothesizes that the current diagnostic categories represent maladaptive variants of general personality traits. However, a fundamental foundation of this viewpoint is that dimensional models can adequately account for the pathology currently described by these categories. While most of the personality disorders have well established links to dimensional models that buttress this hypothesis, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) has obtained only inconsistent support. The current study administered multiple measures of 1) conscientiousness-related personality traits, 2) DSM-IV OCPD, and 3) specific components of OCPD (e.g., compulsivity and perfectionism) to a sample of 536 undergraduates who were oversampled for elevated OCPD scores. Six existing measures of conscientiousness-related personality traits converged strongly with each other supporting their assessment of a common trait. These measures of conscientiousness correlated highly with scales assessing specific components of OCPD, but obtained variable relationships with measures of DSM-IV OCPD. More specifically, there were differences within the conscientiousness instruments such that those designed to assess general personality functioning had small to medium relationships with OCPD, but those assessing more maladaptive variants obtained large effect sizes. These findings support the view that OCPD does represent a maladaptive variant of normal-range conscientiousness.

Predicting Individual Score Elevation in an Applicant Setting: The Influence of Individual Differences and Situational Perceptions

Previous research has indicated that applicants can increase their scores on non‐cognitive measures by half of 1 standard deviation (e.g., Rosse, Stecher, Miller, &amp; Levin, 1998; Viswesvaran &amp; Ones, 1999). Two influential factors have been proposed to influence this elevation: individual differences and situational influences (e.g., Douglas, McDaniel, &amp; Snell, 1996). The current study examined how individual differences and motivation (expectancy theory) predicted individual response elevation from a general to a job applicant context using a conscientiousness measure. Results indicated that elevation was primarily predicted by emotional stability, instrumentality, and the interaction between expectancy and instrumentality. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.