amitpamin comments on Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 16 October 2012 10:43PM

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Comment author: amitpamin 17 October 2012 12:05:00AM 7 points [-]

Good question. I assume you ask because conscientiousness is highly correlated with a number of positive life outcomes?

  1. Conscientiousness is temporally stable, that is, in the average individual, it does not much change over time.
  2. Conscientiousness is linked to a number of other personality traits - e.g. self-regulation, perseverance, etc.... These traits can be trained; and according to a quick skim of the study below, training those traits in turn effects conscientiousness, at least in children.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/publications/EisenbergDuckworth_ConscientiousnessOriginsinChildhood_2012.pdf

  1. In adults, the trait is more temporally stable (sorry, no citation off hand), but there are hacks - e.g. self-control strategies like mental contrasting, implementation intentions, learned industriousness, etc... can partially achieve the same effect as having more conscientiousness.

This is a good question though... I will investigate some more.