High vs Low Conscientiousness: Organization, Self-Control, and Flexibility

7 days ago

18 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: October 9, 2026 · Editorial Policy

Ukrainian Psychological Hub · October 9, 2026 · Psychology for the AI Era

High and low conscientiousness describe different positions on a continuous Big Five personality dimension associated with planning, dependability, effort, organization, and the regulation of goal-directed behavior. People who score relatively higher often report greater order, persistence, and follow-through. People who score relatively lower often report less reliance on routines or long-range structure. Both positions encompass many combinations of habits and motivations; neither is a personality type or a measure of moral worth.

The scientifically useful comparison asks how a person's typical tendencies interact with the demands of a particular task, environment, and relationship. This guide examines everyday examples, possible advantages and costs at both ends, self-control and flexibility, measurement, work and school research, misleading stereotypes, and practical ways to manage commitments. The contrast is grounded in studies of conscientiousness structure and behavior, including Roberts and colleagues' multiscale investigation and Jackson and colleagues' behavioral validation research.

High vs low conscientiousness at a glance

Relatively high conscientiousness is often expressed through preparing in advance, coordinating deadlines, maintaining routines, completing obligations, and checking whether work meets an agreed standard. Relatively low conscientiousness is often expressed through less formal planning, a preference for keeping options open, or responding to tasks as they become salient. These are tendencies rather than promises about what any one person will do.

Organization: a higher-scoring person may prefer calendars, labeled documents, predictable sequences, and advance preparation. A lower-scoring person may rely on simpler systems, maintain a less orderly workspace, or organize only when a task demands it.

Persistence: a higher-scoring person may continue an uninteresting but necessary task until it is finished. A lower-scoring person may find it harder to sustain effort without immediate feedback or personal interest, while still showing considerable persistence in meaningful activities.

Self-control: a higher-scoring person may more often inhibit an immediate impulse in favor of a longer-term objective. A lower-scoring person may be more responsive to immediate opportunities or rewards, yet can also exercise strong self-control in specific situations.

Responsibility: a higher-scoring person may make commitments conservatively and follow through routinely. A lower-scoring person may benefit from more explicit reminders, fewer simultaneous commitments, or accountability structures.

Flexibility: an orderly, highly conscientious person may enjoy having a defined plan, and sometimes experience friction when plans change. A less structured person may welcome improvisation. However, adaptability is not an inherent reward for low conscientiousness, and rigidity does not automatically follow from high conscientiousness; both claims require direct evidence about the behavior in question.

A single domain score conceals meaningful variation. An individual can keep an immaculate calendar but struggle to initiate complex tasks, or dislike clutter while being highly dependable. These apparent contradictions are expected because conscientiousness includes partially separable components. Roberts et al. (2005) found distinct lower-order dimensions and differential associations with behavioral outcomes.

What does high conscientiousness mean?

A high conscientiousness result means that a respondent endorsed more of the behaviors, attitudes, or preferences represented by the conscientiousness items in a specific validated instrument, relative to the applicable score reference. Without that instrument's scoring guidance and comparison sample, high is a descriptive label rather than a universal numerical threshold. For the underlying domain structure, see the Conscientiousness trait overview and the Big Five personality model guide.

At the behavioral level, higher conscientiousness commonly involves ordering activities to meet obligations, investing effort in completion, considering consequences, and maintaining standards over time. It can show up as arriving prepared, protecting time for difficult tasks, or consistently meeting promises. The pattern concerns typical behavior across many occasions; one messy desk or missed appointment is not enough to characterize a person.

Common strengths of relatively high conscientiousness

Preparation can reduce avoidable omissions when work has multiple steps. Dependability can make coordination easier for teams, families, and other people who rely on deadlines or promises. Persistence can sustain work after enthusiasm fades. Deliberation can create room to evaluate consequences before acting. These tendencies are useful in many environments, but their usefulness varies with task demands and with other traits, skills, resources, and opportunities.

The evidence for occupational relevance is substantial at the group level. An early meta-analysis by Barrick and Mount found conscientiousness related to job-performance criteria across occupational groups. A later synthesis of 92 meta-analyses by Wilmot and Ones examined a much wider range of work variables. Such findings support a probabilistic association, not a conclusion that a particular high scorer will outperform a particular low scorer.

Possible tradeoffs of higher conscientiousness

Time spent checking details can exceed the benefits when errors are inexpensive and decisions are reversible. Strong commitment to a plan can make switching strategies feel costly. A person who continually accepts responsibility may accumulate too many obligations. These are plausible task-level costs worth monitoring, rather than traits every high-scoring person necessarily possesses.

Some research offers narrower evidence for competing pathways. A two-wave study of employees reported that conscientiousness was associated both with greater self-efficacy and with increased performance pressure, which in turn related differently to thriving at work. The findings arose from a particular observational sample and should not be generalized into a rule that conscientious people are rigid or destined to burn out.

What does low conscientiousness mean?

A low conscientiousness result indicates relatively less endorsement of measured conscientiousness tendencies within the scoring system used. It does not establish that a person is lazy, dishonest, unintelligent, uncaring, or incapable of sustained work. Reliability in a particular relationship or role must be assessed by actual behavior in that context.

Someone who scores lower may rely less on schedules, work in bursts, reorganize priorities frequently, have difficulty with repetitive duties, or prefer immediate feedback. That person may still be highly effective when goals are compelling, expectations are visible, and the environment supports follow-through. An individual's pattern can also include some strong conscientiousness facets alongside lower ones.

Where a less structured approach may help

A willingness to reconsider a plan, operate with fewer routines, or tolerate a visually untidy workspace may be useful in some contexts. This is a contextual possibility, not evidence that low conscientiousness causes superior flexibility, creativity, problem-solving, or entrepreneurship. Those outcomes depend on abilities, openness to experience, cognitive processes, expertise, incentives, and situational demands. Popular descriptions that automatically equate low conscientiousness with creativity go beyond what a conscientiousness score establishes.

For example, two designers may both produce excellent work. One uses checkpoints, version control, and a precise schedule; the other alternates experimentation and concentrated production, using a deadline-oriented review system to protect final delivery. The difference in workflow illustrates possible preferences, not a scientifically validated classification of designers.

Where lower conscientiousness can create friction

Unclear deadlines, long delays between effort and feedback, repetitive administrative work, and multiple concurrent obligations may make inconsistent organization or task initiation more consequential. The practical issue is whether important commitments are met, not whether a person's style resembles an ideal of neatness. External cues, fewer competing tasks, and visible checkpoints can offset some situational risks without requiring a personality label.

Organization, self-control, persistence, and responsibility are related but different

Conscientiousness is a broad domain that gathers several correlated tendencies. It is useful to ask which specific feature of a person's behavior is under discussion: physical order, planned work, goal persistence, impulse regulation, or interpersonal dependability. A global high or low score cannot automatically answer all these questions.

Organization and orderliness

Organization concerns arranging physical or digital surroundings and sequencing activities. Orderliness concerns a preference for regularity and structure. A highly orderly person might prefer clean files and an uncluttered schedule without being especially ambitious. Conversely, someone can be industrious and dependable while working at a chaotic desk. Organized appearance is therefore an incomplete proxy for conscientiousness.

Industriousness and sustained effort

Industriousness concerns energetic pursuit of goals and willingness to work through demanding tasks. It may be expressed through repeated practice, sustained projects, and persistence after setbacks. Research on the Big Five Aspect Scales distinguishes Industriousness and Orderliness as two broader aspects of conscientiousness. These are named aspects in that model, rather than a universal classification used identically by every personality test.

Self-control and deliberation

Self-control concerns managing responses in the service of a chosen goal. Deliberation involves considering alternatives and consequences before acting. Although both relate to conscientiousness, the wider science of self-control uses multiple operational definitions and methods. A meta-analysis by Duckworth and Kern found only moderate convergence across different self-control measures, showing why one questionnaire scale should not be treated as a direct reading of executive-function capacity.

Dependability and responsibility

Dependability means following through on commitments that affect other people; responsibility concerns taking obligations seriously. Their interpretation is social and contextual. Paying a bill on time, respecting another person's deadline, and reliably caring for a dependent involve overlapping but distinct demands. Behavioral-indicator research supports describing conscientiousness through multiple observable practices rather than through a single stereotype.

Do different Big Five tests measure the same components?

The broad conscientiousness domain appears in several major Big Five and Five-Factor Model measurement traditions. The finer structure depends on the instrument. A broad domain score, an aspect score, and a facet score belong to different levels of analysis and are not interchangeable.

The 60-item Big Five Inventory–2 (BFI-2) reports three conscientiousness facets named Organization, Productiveness, and Responsibility. These facet names and item groupings are specified in the BFI-2 development and validation study by Soto and John. They should not be relabeled as if they were NEO or BFAS scales.

The Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) operationalizes the domain through Orderliness and Industriousness, as described by DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson. NEO inventories use their own conscientiousness facet tradition, conventionally including Competence, Order, Dutifulness, Achievement Striving, Self-Discipline, and Deliberation in the six-facet NEO model. This distinction matters because an instrument's domain and facet results answer different questions. For an instrument-specific explanation of the six NEO conscientiousness facets, see the NEO Personality Inventory guide.

An additional study integrating scales from seven major inventories identified six lower-order factors—industriousness, order, self-control, responsibility, traditionalism, and virtue—and found some factors lay partly between conscientiousness and other Big Five domains. Research continues to examine more fine-grained structures. No single fixed inventory of facets is universal across all Big Five measures.

High organization with low motivation—and other mixed profiles

A conscientiousness domain score is a statistical summary. Two people can receive similar totals while differing markedly in facets. Consider a person who keeps detailed lists but postpones demanding work: order may be stronger than productive persistence. Another person may finish assignments early but maintain disorganized belongings: follow-through may be stronger than visible tidiness.

The same logic applies to low domain scores. Someone who enjoys spontaneity may still be consistently dependable to friends; someone who dislikes routine may be unusually disciplined when practicing a valued craft. These examples illustrate combinations allowed by multidimensional measurement rather than describing standardized, diagnostic subtypes.

When a report supplies facet scores from a validated instrument, the facet profile can improve description. However, shorter measures do not always support trustworthy individual facet interpretation. Soto and John's comparison of BFI-2 short forms describes the tradeoff between measurement length and the precision needed for narrower interpretations.

Is high conscientiousness always better?

There is strong evidence that greater conscientiousness is associated with several valued outcomes, especially in work and educational settings. Evidence about the optimum amount for a specific person or situation is more complicated. Relative benefit depends on how the trait is measured, which facet matters, what outcome is being assessed, and what other demands the person faces.

The claim that extremely high conscientiousness always becomes pathological is unsupported. High standards, persistence, and careful planning can be adaptive. Equally, the claim that increased conscientiousness is always beneficial in every setting exceeds the evidence. A practical evaluation asks whether actual strategies produce timely, sustainable, proportionate results.

Conscientiousness versus perfectionism

Perfectionism is not synonymous with conscientiousness. A meta-analysis of 77 studies by Smith and colleagues found that perfectionistic strivings were positively associated with conscientiousness, whereas perfectionistic concerns had a different personality pattern, prominently involving neuroticism. A conscientious person may be careful without fearing mistakes intensely; a person with perfectionistic concerns may struggle even when their task-management practices are inconsistent.

If repeated checking, distress about imperfections, or overwork is causing significant problems, examine those experiences on their own terms. A Big Five result cannot establish an anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Symptom severity, duration, impairment, differential considerations, and professional clinical assessment are separate questions.

Does lower conscientiousness mean greater flexibility?

Flexibility has several meanings: tolerating changed plans, switching attention, revising beliefs, adapting methods, and responding well under uncertainty. These are different constructs. A person may love an improvisational schedule while struggling with cognitive set-shifting, or prefer routine while adapting expertly to emergencies. Treat flexibility as an observable capability or context-sensitive behavior rather than a guaranteed consequence of a low conscientiousness score.

A manager can distinguish adaptive planning from rigidity by asking whether a plan is revised when evidence changes. A student can distinguish useful spontaneity from avoidable delay by observing whether essential tasks are completed on time. The evaluation belongs to performance in the situation, not to a high-versus-low personality verdict.

How high and low conscientiousness appear in real life

At work

A more conscientious employee might document responsibilities, prepare for meetings, check details, and keep promises. A less structured colleague might begin with a rough prototype, move between tasks, or work best when deliverables are divided into short cycles. Either can be effective in a role with suitable tools, knowledge, motivation, and support.

The occupational literature provides comparatively strong evidence for conscientiousness as a positive group-level correlate of performance. Wilmot and Ones' broad review examined 92 unique meta-analyses. Its findings do not justify making employment decisions from a single informal test or concluding that less conscientious individuals cannot excel. Fair hiring decisions require validated job-related procedures and attention to adverse consequences; the dedicated Big Five hiring and job-performance articles will own the full assessment of that evidence.

In education

A conscientious student may set regular study periods, prepare for exams well ahead of time, and check assignments before submitting them. A lower-scoring student may gravitate toward interest-driven work, rely on time pressure, or benefit from external schedules. Neither profile determines intelligence, learning potential, or academic identity.

In Poropat's meta-analysis of Five-Factor Model traits and academic performance, conscientiousness was an important personality correlate of academic outcomes. Such associations summarize groups and cannot predict an individual student's grades or establish a diagnosis from missed deadlines.

In relationships and household responsibilities

Conscientiousness may become visible in shared calendars, household chores, financial obligations, and remembering plans. A highly organized partner might experience missed commitments as disruptive; a less structured partner might experience excessive scheduling as constraining. Shared expectations and division of labor matter more than assuming one person has the right personality.

A useful conversation is concrete: Which commitments require a fixed deadline? Which can be flexible? What reminder system will both people accept? Which tasks should be owned by one person rather than repeatedly negotiated? Personality vocabulary can clarify recurring preferences, while observed follow-through establishes whether an agreement works.

With health habits and daily routines

Regular preventive behaviors and risk management can be relevant to conscientiousness. A meta-analysis by Bogg and Roberts reported relationships between conscientiousness-related traits and multiple health-related behaviors. This does not mean conscientiousness directly causes health outcomes, or that a low-scoring person has a known medical prognosis.

Health practices are also affected by access to services, financial resources, disability, working conditions, social support, and medical needs. Interventions should address modifiable barriers directly rather than assigning health responsibility to personality alone.

Trait and state: why you can act against your usual pattern

A personality trait describes a relatively characteristic distribution of behavior across situations and time. A state refers to behavior or experience at a particular moment. A typically conscientious person can miss appointments during disruption or exhaustion; a typically spontaneous person can maintain rigorous procedures for a critical project.

In experience-sampling research by Fleeson, people displayed substantial within-person variation in Big Five-relevant states, even as individual distributions retained stable characteristic patterns. Behavior therefore depends on both relatively enduring tendencies and immediate context. A test score is best read as an estimate of a tendency, not a script for every action.

Can conscientiousness change?

Conscientiousness shows relative stability while also allowing development over years. People may develop better organizational habits, adapt to changing responsibilities, or alter how they respond to deadlines. A change in one daily routine is not automatically evidence of a durable shift in the underlying trait, and a single repeated test can reflect measurement error as well as substantive change.

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Roberts and colleagues found that personality measures can change during interventions, with domain-specific differences in which traits changed most. That evidence supports the possibility of change; it does not promise that a generic productivity technique will raise a conscientiousness score by a predetermined amount.

How to interpret a high or low conscientiousness test score

First identify the instrument. Is the score from the BFI-2, a NEO inventory, a particular International Personality Item Pool scale, the BFAS, or an unvalidated online quiz? Different measures use different items, response scales, lower-order components, and normative procedures. Their raw numbers cannot be compared directly.

Second examine the reference frame. A percentile compares your score with a specific normative distribution. A raw score or within-scale average lacks an inherent universal threshold for high or low. A test that reports labels should identify how they were produced and for whom the comparison is meaningful.

Third consider measurement precision. Brief tests can be appropriate for research groups or initial educational reflection while offering limited detail about an individual. Repeated testing, response style, translations, and the appropriateness of the norm sample all matter. The BFI-2 validation paper and the BFI-2 short-form evaluation illustrate why measurement properties should be tied to the specific instrument and intended interpretation.

Fourth compare the result with recurring behaviors observed over time. Do missed deadlines happen mostly when requirements are unclear? Is a tidy environment important even when motivation is low? Does a person reliably keep promises but dislike bureaucratic procedures? Behavioral context often makes a global score more useful.

Finally avoid translating a score into a clinical judgment, moral ranking, hiring verdict, or deterministic life prediction. A large preregistered replication program on personality and life outcomes supports the replicability of many group-level associations while also documenting smaller replication effects relative to original findings. Predictive relationships deserve calibration and attention to uncertainty.

How to work with your conscientiousness level

If planning and order come naturally

Keep the systems that prevent real errors and support the work you value. Define what complete means before beginning, distinguish safety-critical details from reversible cosmetic choices, and set a reasonable point at which a task is ready to submit. When a plan changes, ask which goal remains constant and which steps can be replaced.

Protect recovery and personal choice alongside obligations. Review the cost of a standard before automatically increasing it. Invite feedback when colleagues experience a workflow as inflexible. The aim is to make careful organization serve meaningful results.

If structure and persistence take more effort

Choose lightweight external supports. Put deadlines where they will be encountered, break long assignments into visible milestones, reduce the number of simultaneous obligations, and make an explicit next action easier to start. When a commitment affects another person, agree in advance on timing and confirmation.

Experiment with one support at a time. A reminder system is useful if it reliably changes the outcome, regardless of how elegant it looks. Reliable participation in work or relationships can arise from clear environmental design as well as from an internal preference for routine.

If your facet profile is uneven

Match supports to the component that needs them. An orderly but procrastinating person may need task initiation and reinforcement rather than another filing system. A productive but disorganized person may need shared documentation, backups, or simple checklists. A reliable but overcommitted person may need to negotiate capacity, not increase effort.

These are practical suggestions drawn from the distinctions within the construct. They are not personality treatment protocols, and their effectiveness for a particular person should be evaluated through observable results rather than inferred from a questionnaire alone.

Common misconceptions

Low conscientiousness means laziness

A low domain score summarizes responses about characteristic tendencies; it cannot establish motivation, capacity, effort, or character in every domain. Interest, physical and mental health, opportunity, learning conditions, and task structure can substantially alter what a person does.

High conscientiousness means a person has obsessive-compulsive disorder

Organizing files, checking work, and caring about deadlines are ordinary behaviors. OCD and other clinical conditions involve specific diagnostic criteria and assessment. Neither extreme of a conscientiousness scale is itself a mental-health diagnosis.

Low conscientiousness automatically means ADHD

Inattention, executive-function difficulty, stress, poor sleep, depression, and environmental overload can each complicate tasks. ADHD is assessed through established clinical criteria and a history of symptoms and impairment. A Big Five score alone neither diagnoses nor excludes it.

High conscientiousness proves honesty or kindness

Conscientiousness includes components of responsibility and dutifulness in some models, but it does not measure virtue or empathy as a total personal judgment. Other personality dimensions, circumstances, interests, and choices remain relevant.

High or low conscientiousness is a fixed personality type

The Big Five framework models continuous differences. A label such as high or low is a summary relative to a score distribution and test, not membership in a natural category. Two people on the same side of an arbitrary cutoff can be markedly different. The distinction between Big Five traits and personality types explains why these labels remain relative descriptions.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main difference between high and low conscientiousness?

The main difference is the degree to which a person typically reports organized, persistent, deliberate, and responsible goal-directed tendencies on a particular Big Five measure. High and low are relative positions along a continuum.

Can someone be organized but have low conscientiousness?

Yes. Orderliness can be relatively strong while other components such as persistence or productiveness are weaker. The apparent mismatch is one reason instrument-specific facets are useful when measurement quality allows their interpretation.

Are people with low conscientiousness more spontaneous?

Some may report preferring fewer routines or more immediate adjustments. Spontaneity is not guaranteed by a low score, and greater creativity or cognitive flexibility cannot be inferred from the label alone.

Is a very high conscientiousness score a problem?

The score itself is not a problem or diagnosis. Examine concrete consequences: do standards improve results, or do checking, overcommitment, or distress interfere with valued activities? The answer depends on the person and situation.

Does high conscientiousness predict job success?

It is a useful group-level predictor of a range of work outcomes in meta-analytic research. Individual success is influenced by skills, abilities, team conditions, resources, chance, opportunity, and many other factors. No Big Five score determines an individual's performance.

Does low conscientiousness mean low intelligence?

No. Personality and cognitive ability are distinct constructs. A score about planning or follow-through is not a valid substitute for an intelligence assessment.

Can you increase conscientiousness?

People can cultivate habits related to planning and follow-through, and personality traits can change over time. Demonstrating lasting trait change requires appropriate repeated measurement; habit improvement and trait-score change should be distinguished.

What does a 50th-percentile conscientiousness score mean?

For a norm-referenced test, it indicates a position around the middle of the relevant comparison sample. It does not imply average behavior in every situation, and the meaning depends on the instrument and the norms provided.

How can partners with different conscientiousness levels cooperate?

Set explicit shared expectations, divide responsibilities, agree which deadlines are fixed, and use reminders when needed. Observable reliability and mutual consent are more informative than debating who has the better score.

Is conscientiousness the same as self-discipline?

Self-discipline is one related narrower feature. Conscientiousness also encompasses aspects of order, industriousness, dependability, deliberation, and responsibility depending on the measure.

The evidence in perspective

Conscientiousness is among the most studied Big Five domains. Evidence for its differentiated structure, behavioral expressions, and statistical associations with several outcomes comes from primary psychometric studies, longitudinal investigations, and meta-analyses. At the same time, its precise facet structure depends on the measure, correlations differ by context, and a trait score alone offers limited information about what a particular person will do tomorrow.

The most useful interpretation combines a validated measure, an appropriate reference sample, facet information when supported, and patterns of actual behavior. Higher and lower conscientiousness describe variation in how people typically organize effort and commitments. The goal is to understand that variation accurately and to design choices that work in the person's circumstances.

For the behavioral mechanisms that relate to but differ from the personality trait of conscientiousness, see Motivation, Habits, and Self-Control: Psychology of Behavior Change.

References

Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991.tb00688.x

Bogg, T., & Roberts, B. W. (2004). Conscientiousness and health-related behaviors: A meta-analysis of the leading behavioral contributors to mortality. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 887–919. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.6.887

DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 880–896. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880

Duckworth, A. L., & Kern, M. L. (2011). A meta-analysis of the convergent validity of self-control measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 45, 259–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2011.02.004

Fleeson, W. (2001). Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 1011–1027. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.1011

Jackson, J. J., Wood, D., Bogg, T., Walton, K. E., Harms, P. D., & Roberts, B. W. (2010). What do conscientious people do? Development and validation of the Behavioral Indicators of Conscientiousness. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 501–511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.06.005

Liu, F., Qin, W., Liu, X., Li, J., & Sun, L. (2022). Enabling and burdening: The double-edged sword of conscientiousness. Personality and Individual Differences, 184, 111216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111216

Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014996

Roberts, B. W., Chernyshenko, O. S., Stark, S., & Goldberg, L. R. (2005). The structure of conscientiousness: An empirical investigation based on seven major personality questionnaires. Personnel Psychology, 58, 103–139. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00301.x

Roberts, B. W., Luo, J., Briley, D. A., Chow, P. I., Su, R., & Hill, P. L. (2017). A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychological Bulletin, 143, 117–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000088

Smith, M. M., Sherry, S. B., Vidovic, V., Saklofske, D. H., Stoeber, J., & Benoit, A. (2019). Perfectionism and the Five-Factor Model of personality: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23, 367–390. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868318814973

Soto, C. J. (2019). How replicable are links between personality traits and consequential life outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project. Psychological Science, 30, 711–727. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619831612

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017a). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 117–143. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017b). Short and extra-short forms of the Big Five Inventory–2: The BFI-2-S and BFI-2-XS. Journal of Research in Personality, 68, 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2017.02.004

Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2019). A century of research on conscientiousness at work. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116, 23004–23010. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908430116

Psychological Encyclopedia