The Big Five

Conscientiousness
“Controllers”

Slides by prof. V. Perrone

Based upon Daniel Nettle, 2007, Personality. What makes you the way you are
And Jordan B. Peterson course on Big Five
 The Iowa Gambling Task

Try this test here:

2 https://www.psytoolkit.org/experiment-library/igt.html#refs
Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 The Iowa Gambling Task

The test is psychologically interesting because A

What have you learned? and B, the unprofitable decks, carry the largest
immediate rewards.

In order to play profitably, you have to overcome

the lure of the immediate $100 reward, in favor
of the more deliberate consideration that you
would be better off in the long run if you take the
modest pay-offs and much lower fines of C and D

Much of life has a character analogous to the

Iowa task

We are constantly inhibiting rewards cued

up in our environments, to follow instead
some internally set goal or more deferred
gratification

3 Prof. Vincenzo Perrone

 Who has problem with the Iowa
Gambling Task?

Who are the people who have difficulties in abandoning the

immediate gratification strategy?
• people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex, which has been known to affect neural signaling
of prospective rewards or punishments (Bechara, A.; Damasio, A. R.;
Damasio, H.; Anderson, S. W. (1994). "Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to
human prefrontal cortex". Cognition. 50 (1–3): 7–15)

• problem gamblers
• people who have a dependency on alcohol, cocaine or
marijuana
Do they have anything in common?
4 Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 Genetic roots of related behaviors

Researchers have studied the co-occurrence of gambling,

addictions, and antisocial behavior (recurrent irresponsibility
and law breaking) in the population at large, within families,
and using twins, and concluded that there is a genetic
liability common to these kinds of uncontrolled behaviors

Thus if drinking, drugs, gambling, and law-breaking occur in

the same environments it is probably not an accident of
history. It reflects the temperamental make up of the
people drawn to these places
5 Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
Conscientiousness
The human population is not divided into two groups,
those with an impulse control problem and those without.
Instead there is a long continuum, somewhere along
which we each fall
In the five-factor model the dimension related to
impulse control is called Conscientiousness
High scorers are disciplined, organized, and self-
controlled, whereas low scorers are impulsive,
spontaneous and have weakness of the will

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 Addictions, Extraversion and
Conscientiousness
• Surely the degree to which one will be tempted by things like
drinks and drugs is a matter of Extraversion
• Yet in studies of which personality characteristics predict the
development of addiction problems, it is Conscientiousness
(low) rather than Extraversion that features
• High Extraversion scorers will get a bigger buzz from a drink,
a high, or a thrilling game of chance. However if they are
also high in Conscientiousness, they will be able to decide
not to do it again
• The reasons for relapse are not pleasure-seeking or even
craving so much as the inability of inhibitory mechanisms to
7 stop the habit once formed Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
The neurological bases of Conscientiousness

The right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex seems to be involved in

inhibiting the response to the environmental cue with the person’s
internal held rule
In a study those who were the least impulsive (most conscientious)
had the largest right dorsolateral prefrontal activation when they
had to inhibit a certain behavior

Conscientiousness is the
magnitude of reactivity of those
mechanisms in the frontal lobe that
serve to inhibit an immediate
response in favor of a goal or rule
8 Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 Conscientiousness and work
performance
• Conscientiousness is the most reliable personality predictor of
occupational success across the board (as opposed to the
personality requirements of particular types of job)
• The correlation is 0.2, not very high indicating that other factors, like
intelligence, have an influence. However is impressive the sheer
consistency of the findings. The more conscientious you are, the better
you will do in the workplace, however better is defined and whichever
workplace it is
• The benefits of Conscientiousness are especially evident when the
worker has a lot of autonomy
• High Conscientious scorers set a lot of goals and stick to them,
compared to low scorers, who set goals less often, and are also inclined
not to stick to them. Low scorers procrastinate and put things off,
9 which is a way of not executing goals Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 Conscientiousness, intelligence and
work performance

Both Conscientiousness and Intelligence

predict success at work
They are distinct characteristics and not highly
correlated. In a couple of studies that have
found a correlation, this is weakly negative
An explanation of this counterintuitive finding
could be that people who are very sharp soon
learn that they can get away with no preparing
things too much in advance, not being overly
disciplined with their time and so on, since
their quick abilities will get them through
whatever academic and professional
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challenges they meet Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 Conscientiousness: too much of a good
thing?
• The usefulness of Conscientiousness is exaggerated by the
contemporary developed-world environment
• Few of our ancestors survived and reproduced by being able
to stay in the same place for 8 hours a day, quietly getting
on with a series of pre-planned or repetitive tasks according
to a specific set of rules
• For hunter-gathered ancestor some planning should have
been useful but most of their survival depended upon the
capacity to react impulsively to external stimuli, by
improvising a lot
• There are professions and roles in today’s world that require
the same capacity to respond strongly, spontaneously, and
energetically to immediate stimuli
• Think of players in professional sports like American football
11 or basketball, or soldiers on the battlefield,Prof.
or…?Vincenzo Perrone
 Conscientiousness and Obsessive-
Compulsive Personality Disorders (OCPD)

• OCPD (an anxiety disorder also related with high

Neuroticism) represents high Conscientiousness in an
extreme form
• Psychiatrists define it as “a pervasive pattern of
preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and
mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of
flexibility, openness and efficiency
• In OCPD there is a disjunction between means and
ends. Sticking to the plan or schedule becomes the main
issue, and the actual point of the activity is entirely lost.
• Secondly perfectionisms is so great that it prevents the
person getting things done
• Also interpersonal relationships suffer, since the affected
individuals will not allow themselves any fun, leisure, or
undirected social time
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Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 Conscientiousness from an
evolutionary perspective
• Over evolutionary time Conscientiousness has sometimes been a curse
and sometimes a blessing depending on local conditions
• Broadly, if the environment is very stable and predictable, then high
Conscientiousness would be selected for, as high scoring individuals
would be focused, organized and not get distracted
• On the other end if the environment is unpredictable, the people who
will do best are those who can respond spontaneously to whatever it
throws at them at that particular moment
• High Conscientiousness scorers don’t do well when you have to be this
flexible as they find the change of routine upsetting and difficult to
adjust to
• The broad spectrum of Conscientiousness we see today probably reflects
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the inconsistency of selection that humans have experienced in the past
Prof. Vincenzo Perrone
 Questions and reflections
1. For which roles in an organization you think that hiring a
person who scores high on Conscientiousness would be a
good idea?
2. Do you think a leader can be low on Conscientiousness?
In which situation such a trait could be useful
3. Are there strategies you can implement as an individual to
reduce/ enhance/ control your level of Conscientiousness?
4. Are there conditions in the organizational environment
that could enhance the level of Conscientiousness in
people?
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