Conscientious people are systematic and dutiful and are more likely to follow through on their plans than their less conscientious peers.
Being more conscientious is simply a matter of faking it until you make it, a study suggests.
Far from being impossible to change, people can increase their conscientiousness by starting to behave in more hard-working and organised ways until it becomes second nature.
People in the study did things like make to-do lists and tidy up their homes.
Increased conscientiousness is one of the changes to personality that people desire the most, along with increased extraversion and emotional stability.
Conscientiousness is one of the five major aspects of personality.
Conscientious people are systematic and dutiful and are more likely to follow through on their plans than their less conscientious peers.
Conscientious people are also are more careful, efficient and self-disciplined — and they aim for achievement.
Personality change, though, is often seen as something that is very hard or even impossible.
Dr Nathan Hudson, the study’s author, begs to differ:
“The idea of personality trait change – especially other people trying to change an individual’s personality – can sound scary.
But whether we recognize it or not, society is filled with interventions designed to try to change our personality traits.
For instance, elementary school is a giant intervention designed to help children become more intelligent, yes, but also kinder and more sociable, responsible and hardworking.”
For the research, Dr Hudson tested college student’s ability to change two aspects of their personality: increase their conscientiousness and increase their emotional stability.
The results showed that conscientiousness could be increased through simple practice, whether or not the students were motivated to change.
Dr Hudson said:
“Motivation is largely irrelevant to interventions targeting conscientiousness, as long as participants adhere to the intervention.”
However, emotional stability could not easily be increased when the students were not motivated.
Dr Hudson thinks it comes down to the nature of negative emotions:
“For many people, it can be difficult to ‘just stop feeling angry’ or ‘just stop being stressed.
My hunch is that indirect strategies for changing someone’s emotions, such as writing in a journal or thinking about positive things, can only really work when people want to use those techniques to change their emotions.”
Dr Hudson thinks organisations and schools could help people improve some personality traits:
“This provides promising evidence that schools, companies, or other organizations could ask people to make relatively minor changes that could help improve their lives by making them more organized and responsible over time.
In contrast, it appears that emotional stability might require a bit more investment from the people who partake in an intervention.”
→ Read on: How To Change Your Personality
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Hudson, 2021).
