Talk:Conscientiousness/Archives/2013

phrasing
from this quote, "According to these models, conscientiousness is considered to be a continuous dimension of personality, rather than a categorical "type" of person." i understand that conscientiousness can change over one's life like hair color as opposed to, say, sex.

if my understanding is correct, then phrases like these, "People who score high on the trait of conscientiousness tend to be more organized and less cluttered in their homes and offices." should be phrased to reflect the ability of conscientiousness to change, like this quote, "Low levels of conscientiousness are strongly associated with procrastination..." or this one even, "Conscientiousness is related to successful academic performance in students."

this may seem silly but i feel that anybody reading this, who feels that they aren't conscientious, may want to change this particularly when a student or whatever. they don't want to just feel doomed to fail. people need hope in order to make an effort, so to give them the possibility to change might encourage them to try to do so and not further make them abandon their goals. i feel like conscientiousness has changed very much over the course of my life depending on whether i found my action meaningful or not, like if i had a purpose or reason to do so... so although this is just an issue of phrasing that i've brought up i also feel it is not merely cosmetic.Makeswell (talk) 15:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In work, conscientiousness is generally a good trait, until it becomes pathological, leaves the individual unable to work with others and pervades the rest of his or her life. Perhaps the smartest of my friends (his IQ is somewhere in the 130s) is hardly conscientious at all (although I have to give him credit; he has improved a lot this year), and because he often left things to the last minute, he had missed a few due dates. His marks reflected this. It's simple logic; the more effort you put into something, the more you get out. Plus, whatever we may lack in natural ability, we have to make up for in effort. I plan to become a psychiatrist (which requires med school, of course), and if I weren't at least a little conscientious in my school work, I'd probably have to give up that goal, because I'm not particularly gifted. I spend a lot of time reviewing tests, because if I didn't, my average could drop 3%, and that 3% means the world to me (not sarcasm). That 3% keeps me at the top of my class, but more importantly, closer to perfection. Conscientiousness can have a significant impact on academic performance.
 * Of course, excessive perfectionism can be a problem; I spent at least 30 minutes writing this reply, and I may sooner become a psychiatric inpatient than a psychiatrist.
 * So, ideally, one would not want to be at either end of any one of the Big Five personality traits, because they may find themselves in a mental hospital. Someone who's too agreeable may be masochistic and self-sacrificing or sensitive to other's opinions, while someone who's too extraverted can be narcissistic, although one may think it impossible to have too much openness to experiences or too little neuroticism, and this is where the Big Five might be flawed. At this point, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator may be more reliable, because it presents personality traits as neither flaws nor gifts. Conscientiousness would, in this case, translate to Judging, and low conscientiousness, to Perceiving, which also has its own advantages. MichaelExe (talk) 23:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * word, i just mainly wanted to reply in saying how it's interesting that Judging relates to conscientiousness, even though i have thought that Judgers choose more through choice and perceivers choose through process of elimination, which makes sense to me since perceiving is always introverted like an INFP's main mode is introverted-intuitive-feeling, emphasis on feeling rather than intuition, or so i've read. the introverted side is always the conflicted judgments, like is it this or that?, i've seen, and found support for this elsewhere but not clearly enough to post to wikipedia.
 * on a more, um, business-like tone (i was just tossing some ideas around in play) but um, yeah i just feel like wikipedia needs to be free from ideally statements and value judgments, like i just deleted a section which said 'conscientiousness is good' basically. talk pages are fine for that it seems. also just back to my original point i feel like wikipedia also needs to be useful and beneficial to its readers. I am not very conscientious, and I see this in a larger picture personally of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces where sometimes we enter the subconscious and question the values and goals of our society or past selves... and I could totally be wrong there. Conscientiousness, in the right direction of course, or a good and moral direction, is something that I have been working on in order to survive, help others (agreeableness), learn and use that to help others/self, etc. so I feel that people like me need some hope in order to try to be more conscientious, and I would be willing to re-word this page in order to give people hope if I were sure that I wouldn't be fabricating the truth by doing so. That's why, I think, I asked whether my interpretation of that quote above that i gave is accurate. Has conscientiousness been shown to change in individuals over time? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Makeswell (talk • contribs) 14:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, although I don't think one would go from one extreme to the other. I was never really conscientious until about 4 years ago, and I've been working harder and harder ever since. I'm not a big fan of the Big Five personality types, but you could try to show both sides to Conscientiousness ("When taken to an extreme, they may also be workaholics, perfectionists, and compulsive in their behavior,"). Then again, there's a link between Neuroticism (anxiety and depression, in particular) and Conscientiousness, so to separate them is to neglect this link. Generally, Judging types have higher levels of anxiety, while Perceiving types are more laid back, so Judging and Perceiving can include both Conscientiousness and certain aspects of Neuroticism. MichaelExe (talk) 15:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "People who are low on conscientiousness are not necessarily lazy or immoral, but they tend to be more laid back, less goal-oriented, and less driven by success." A little concerned about a generalisaton here. "Low on conscientiousness" sounds like a sociopathic vendetta against non perfectionists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.149.24.120 (talk) 12:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I've reworded it to "score low on", which more accurate and which certainly does not contain any value judgment. --JorisvS (talk) 13:39, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Practical correlations for Conscientiousness
re the psychological concept; I spent some time researching a number of citations for correlations for longevity, happiness, etc. If anyone wants to incorporate them into the article, you can find them at http://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness%20and%20online%20education#conscientiousness --Gwern (contribs) 19:45 20 April 2011 (GMT)