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Conscientiousness: A Review

Conscientiousness: A review

Introduction:

A major contribution of our personality is an essential trait known as Conscientiousness. It was first grouped in the Five Factor Model personality and the circumplex model of interpersonal behavior 40 years ago by well known psychologists named Tupes and Christal(1961) (McCrae and Costa,1985).Recent developments on the work were carried on by several other psychologists like McCrae and Costa (1985a), Digman and Inouye (1986), Hogan (1983), and Peabody and Goldberg(1989) (Paul D. Trapnell and Jerry S. Wiggins
1990). Conscientiousness can be defined as “governing, persevering, unselfish behavior and impelling the individual to duty as conceived by his (or her) culture. A Conscientious person is honest; know what is right and generally does it, even if no one is watching him (or her); does not tell lies or attempt to deceive others, respects others; respects others property. An unconscientious person is somewhat unscrupulous not too careful about standards of right and wrong where personal desires are concerned, tells lies and is given to little deceits; does not respects other’s property.” (Cattell, R. (1965).Penguin.p. 63. ).Conversely, According to (Goldberg 1990, 1993) the positive factors he included in his meta analysis finding were “conventional” and “traditional” and the negative factors were “unconventional”, “rebellious” and “non-conforming”. Conscientiousness in simple terms can also be described as a conception that parents try to generate in their children: that is be on time, keep the room clean, keep things neat and in order etc.” (Loevinger Jane (1994). Conscientiousness is often categorised in terms of stability and levels. Longitudinal studies have been conducted in order to determine stability of conscientiousness over the life span. These studies offered exceptional opportunities to examine the stability of personality from childhood to midlife with measures of conscientiousness. (Goldberg and...