#conscientiousness — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #conscientiousness, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: August 11, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Narcissism and psychopathy linked to entrepreneurial mindsets
People who possess certain dark personality traits, along with specific traditional traits like openness, show a higher natural inclination toward entrepreneurship. A recent psychological survey of working adults revealed that individuals scoring high in narcissism and psychopathy also reported stronger entrepreneurial tendencies. These results were published in the journal Acta Psychologica.
Psychologists often study entrepreneurship not just as an occupation, but as a deep-seated personality construct. In this framework, entrepreneurial tendency is defined as a latent psychological disposition. It involves a strong preference for innovation, a knack for recognizing opportunities, and a drive to create societal value.
According to this perspective, a person can possess a highly entrepreneurial mindset even if they currently work a traditional salaried job. By treating this tendency as a stable pattern of thoughts and emotions, researchers can investigate how it relates to other established facets of human psychology.
To describe general human personality, scientists typically rely on a model known as the Big Five, which categorizes personality into five broad domains. Openness to experience involves imagination and a preference for novelty, while conscientiousness relates to organization and goal-directed behavior. Extraversion is tied to sociability, agreeableness reflects cooperativeness, and emotional stability refers to how well a person handles stress.
In recent years, psychologists have also focused on a cluster of socially undesirable characteristics known as the Dark Triad. Narcissism involves grandiosity, dominance, and an inflated sense of self-worth. Psychopathy is characterized by high impulsivity, arrogance, and low empathy, while Machiavellianism refers to a calculated willingness to manipulate others to achieve personal goals.
Because starting and running a business requires a high degree of confidence, risk tolerance, and a desire for control, these dark traits might naturally appeal to prospective founders. M. Inmaculada López-Núñez and her colleagues at the Complutense University of Madrid wanted to see how these different personality models predict an individual’s internal drive to be an entrepreneur. They designed a study to examine these relationships while accounting for demographic factors like age, gender, and current occupational status.
The researchers recruited 591 adult workers in Spain to participate in the study. The participants ranged in age from 26 to 76 and included both men and women. They represented a variety of employment situations, including traditional salaried employees, self-employed individuals, and unemployed workers. The participants also had diverse educational backgrounds, ranging from primary schooling to advanced university degrees.
Each participant completed a series of online questionnaires. The first survey measured their entrepreneurial tendencies by asking them to rate statements about how often they identify business opportunities or generate new ideas in team settings. The participants rated their agreement on a five-point scale.
Next, the participants completed a brief ten-item inventory to assess their Big Five personality traits. They rated how well certain pairs of adjectives described their typical behavior. Finally, the researchers measured the Dark Triad traits using a specialized twelve-item scale. This survey asked participants to rate their agreement with statements reflecting manipulation, grandiosity, and a lack of remorse.
The researchers used statistical models to determine how much of the variation in entrepreneurial tendencies could be explained by the collected data. They found that demographic factors, traditional personality traits, and dark traits collectively accounted for about 41 percent of the total variation in entrepreneurial tendencies among the participants.
Several traditional Big Five traits were strongly associated with an entrepreneurial mindset. People who scored higher in openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion tended to report higher entrepreneurial tendencies. Openness to experience emerged as the most relevant trait among the Big Five for predicting this business-oriented disposition.
The Dark Triad traits also provided unique predictive value. Specifically, higher scores in narcissism and psychopathy were positively correlated with the entrepreneurial mindset. Narcissism showed the strongest association among the dark traits. The inclusion of these socially undesirable characteristics improved the accuracy of the predictive model, indicating that dark traits offer information about entrepreneurial tendencies that traditional personality models miss.
Demographic and occupational factors played a measurable role in the results as well. Being younger and being male were linked to a stronger psychological disposition toward entrepreneurship. This aligns with some historical data regarding business creation, though the researchers noted that gender gaps in actual start-up activity are narrowing globally.
Additionally, current occupational status was linked to psychological tendencies. Self-employed individuals showed higher entrepreneurial scores than traditional salaried workers. The researchers suggested that choosing self-employment might be an active expression of a person’s latent psychological traits, as individuals naturally gravitate toward work environments that fit their internal needs.
The study has a few limitations. The researchers relied entirely on self-reported data collected at a single point in time. Because of this cross-sectional design, they cannot determine the direction of the relationship between these variables. The data do not prove that possessing dark personality traits causes a person to become more entrepreneurial.
It is possible that the way individuals view themselves skews their survey responses. For example, individuals who score high in narcissism might naturally overestimate their own business acumen, reporting higher entrepreneurial abilities than they actually possess. Self-report surveys capture an individual’s perception of their traits, which may differ from their actual behavior in a business setting.
Future research should track participants over an extended period to see how these personality traits influence actual career choices over time. Observing individuals as they start and manage businesses could help clarify exactly how dark traits interact with traditional personality measures in the real world.
Scientists also need to explore the specific reasons why people choose to start businesses. Distinguishing between those who start companies to seize a new opportunity and those who do so out of economic necessity could reveal different underlying personality profiles.
The study, “Individual differences in entrepreneurial tendencies: The impact of self-employment and the Dark Triad,” was authored by M. Inmaculada López-Núñez, Sara Esteban-Gonzalo, Teresa Diéguez-Risco, and Juan F. Díaz-Morales.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EntrepreneurialMindset #DarkTriad #Narcissism #Psychopathy #OpennessToExperience #Conscientiousness #Extraversion #EntrepreneurshipResearch #SelfEmployment #BigFiveTraits
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DATE: August 7, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: How your core personality traits predict your drinking habits over time
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-your-core-personality-traits-predict-your-drinking-habits-over-time/
A new large study from Japan reveals that a person’s drinking habits over time often remain highly stable and are closely linked to their core personality traits. By tracking thousands of adults for five years, researchers found that higher extraversion is associated with more frequent drinking, while traits like conscientiousness are tied to less regular alcohol consumption. The findings were published in Alcohol and Alcoholism.
Psychologists often use a framework known as the Big Five to describe human personality. This model groups personality into five broad categories. Extraversion relates to being outgoing and sociable. Agreeableness involves cooperation and compassion. Conscientiousness covers organization, self-discipline, and persistence. Negative emotionality, often called neuroticism, refers to a tendency to experience stress or negative moods. Open-mindedness describes a person who is curious and receptive to new experiences.
Previous research frequently links these traits to various health habits, including addictive behaviors. For instance, conscientiousness is typically associated with health-protective behaviors and a lower risk of substance abuse. Extraversion, on the other hand, sometimes relates to higher alcohol consumption, likely due to the social nature of many drinking events.
However, most past studies on personality and alcohol rely on Western populations. Drinking habits are heavily influenced by local culture, social norms, and public policy. Because these environmental factors vary globally, Western findings might not apply everywhere.
In Japan, opportunities for early medical intervention regarding hazardous drinking are often limited in primary care settings. Identifying at-risk groups within the general population could help public health officials design better targeted strategies. Public health workers could use personality as an indicator to predict which individuals might maintain a high frequency of drinking over multiple years.
To explore this, researchers Matsuri Okamoto and Atsushi Oshio from Waseda University in Tokyo analyzed longitudinal data to map out drinking patterns in Japan. They wanted to see if specific personality traits predicted whether someone would fall into a frequent or infrequent drinking category over a five-year period.
The researchers utilized a large dataset tracking adult residents of Japan from 2019 to 2023. The final sample included 14,271 participants. At the start of the study in 2019, participants completed a standardized personality assessment based on the Big Five model. They also provided demographic information, including age, gender, and household income.
Over the next five years, participants repeatedly reported their drinking frequency on an eight-point scale ranging from never drinking to drinking almost every day. To analyze the data, the researchers used a statistical technique called latent class analysis. This method groups individuals into distinct, unseen categories based on their response patterns over time. Rather than assuming everyone follows a single average trend, this approach identifies natural clusters of behavior within the population.
The analysis revealed four distinct groups of drinking frequency. The largest group, making up roughly 27 percent of the sample, was characterized by abstaining or drinking very infrequently. The second group drank about once a month, accounting for nearly 24 percent of the participants. A third group, representing about 26 percent, drank weekly. The final group, comprising roughly 23 percent, consumed alcohol almost daily.
Overall, the researchers found that people’s drinking habits remained largely stable across the five years. Members of the monthly, weekly, and daily groups did show a slight decline in drinking frequency after 2020. This shift was likely a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted typical social routines and restricted access to bars and restaurants.
When the researchers looked at how baseline personality traits predicted group membership, distinct patterns emerged. Higher scores in extraversion consistently predicted membership in the higher-frequency drinking groups. This aligns with past research suggesting that outgoing individuals often find themselves in social situations where alcohol is present.
Conversely, higher conscientiousness was associated with lower odds of belonging to the intermediate monthly or weekly drinking groups, compared to the abstinent group. The researchers suggest that the specific facets of conscientiousness, such as orderliness and persistence, might differentiate intermittent drinking from more clearly routinized behaviors. Highly disciplined individuals might simply avoid casual, occasional drinking habits.
Additionally, participants who scored higher in agreeableness and open-mindedness were more likely to fall into the intermediate monthly and weekly drinking categories. Negative emotionality was the only Big Five trait that did not show a statistically significant relationship with drinking frequency class membership.
Beyond personality, demographic factors also played a substantial role. Men and individuals with higher household incomes had higher odds of belonging to the more frequent drinking groups.
The researchers noted several limitations to the data. The study relies entirely on self-reported answers regarding drinking frequency. The surveys did not measure the volume of alcohol consumed per occasion or the intensity of the drinking episodes. A person who drinks a single beer daily would be in the same frequency category as someone who drinks heavily every day.
The analytic sample was slightly older than the portion of the dataset that was excluded, which could slightly skew the prevalence estimates of the four drinking groups. The data collection also spanned the COVID-19 pandemic. This was an unusual period for social behavior, which might limit how well these specific drinking trajectories apply to normal circumstances.
As an observational study, the findings do not establish that certain personality traits cause specific drinking habits. The data only highlight long-term correlations.
Future studies could incorporate more objective measures of alcohol consumption, capturing both the context of drinking events and exact quantities consumed. Additional research comparing these results with different cultural populations could also clarify how universal these associations between personality and drinking truly are.
The study, “Infrequent, monthly, weekly, or daily? Big Five traits of longitudinal drinking-frequency profiles,” was authored by Matsuri Okamoto and Atsushi Oshio.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-your-core-personality-traits-predict-your-drinking-habits-over-time/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BigFivePersonality #DrinkingHabits #ExtraversionAndDrinking #Conscientiousness #AlcoholConsumption #JapanStudy #LongitudinalResearch #PublicHealthInsights #PersonalityPredictsBehavior #DrinkingFrequencyPatterns
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DATE: August 2, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Left-handed university students show higher neuroticism compared to their right-handed peers
A study of university students from the University of Vienna, Austria found that right-handed students tended to be somewhat more extraverted, conscientious, and emotionally stable compared to their left-handed peers. Females tended to have higher depression scores than males. The paper was published in Brain and Cognition.
The human brain is structurally divided into two hemispheres that exhibit some functional differences. This is referred to as hemispheric specialization or brain lateralization. Although the two hemispheres work together continuously, some abilities are more strongly represented in one hemisphere than the other.
Language is often more left-lateralized, while aspects of spatial attention, face processing, and emotional communication are frequently associated more strongly with the right hemisphere. Brain asymmetry also includes structural differences, such as variations in the size, shape, or cortical thickness of corresponding regions on the two sides. These patterns are not identical in everyone and can vary with handedness, development, experience, and neurological conditions.
Study author Sonja Kuderer and her colleagues note that left- or right-handedness—i.e., which hand a person uses as the dominant one—has to do with how functions are divided between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. They point out that existing evidence suggests that non-right-handedness is linked with increased interhemispheric communication.
Left-handers also seem to exhibit reduced lateralization, a trait that is hypothesized to confer different evolutionary advantages. These advantages might have contributed to the preservation of left-handedness in the population. The authors of this study set out to explore the relationship between handedness, sex, personality, and depression.
Study participants were 198 students at the University of Vienna in Austria. Nearly 92% of them were Austrian or German nationals. 105 participants were women. Participants’ average age was 24 years.
Study participants completed assessments of personality (the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, NEO-FFI), depression (the Beck Depression Inventory – II), and handedness (the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory).
Results showed that right-handed students tended to score higher on conscientiousness and extraversion, while scoring lower on neuroticism compared to left-handed students. In other words, right-handed students tended to be somewhat more extraverted, conscientious, and emotionally stable compared to left-handed students. Female students tended to score higher on the depression assessment.
Further analyses revealed that consistently left-handed male and consistently right-handed female students tended to have the highest depression scores, whereas inconsistent right-handed female and consistent right-handed male students tended to have the lowest scores.
“These findings suggest that handedness and sex independently and interactively shape personality and depressive symptoms, emphasizing the role of lateralization and sex-specific neurobiological mechanisms in affective functioning,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about links between personality and handedness. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a sample of German-speaking university students. Results in other demographic and cultural groups might differ.
The paper, “Sex and handedness differences in Big Five personality traits and depression: Investigating the role of cerebral lateralization,” was authored by Sonja Kuderer, Christoph Rotter, and Sylvia Kirchengast.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #LeftHanded #Handedness #PersonalityTraits #BigFive #Neuroticism #Extraversion #Conscientiousness #Depression #BrainLateralization #HemisphericDifferences
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The reason ‘good’ people experience less joy but feel more fulfilled in life
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How I changed my personality in six weeks.
Based on emerging research showing people can shift their core personality traits, Laurie Clarke tried tweaking hers.
Here’s what happened.
#Personally #Psychology #Health #Openness #Conscientiousness #Extraversion #Agreeableness #Neuroticism #Science #Longread
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We found support for the associations most frequently cited in the literature: #conscientiousness <-> #compliance, and #neuroticism <-> #perceivedRisk. Other associations that are only occasionally seen in the literature were less strongly indicated, and there were some novel discoveries.
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#Conscientiousness (the Big5 personality trait that better predicts career success) is in sustained decline, especially among young adults, just when we need it most.
The good news: personality is malleable. The irony: rebuilding it will take… a lot of conscientiousness.
https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43 -
Don't you find it very convenient to ignore the increasing grasp of market society in the form of extreme competition, growing Indebtedness and lack of career prospects? Arguing that social media and streaming platforms are the culprits is pure lazy thinking. Period.
"All this makes it disconcerting that levels of conscientiousness in the population appear to be in decline. Extending a pioneering 2022 US study which identified early signs of a drop during the pandemic, I found a sustained erosion of conscientiousness, with the fall especially pronounced among young adults.
Digging deeper into the data, which comes from the Understanding America Study, we can see that people in their twenties and thirties in particular report feeling increasingly easily distracted and careless, less tenacious and less likely to make and deliver on commitments.
While a full explanation of these shifts requires thorough investigation, and there will be many factors at work, smartphones and streaming services seem likely culprits. The advent of ubiquitous and hyper-engaging digital media has led to an explosion in distraction, as well as making it easier than ever to either not make plans in the first place or to abandon them.
The sheer convenience of the online world makes real-life commitments feel messy and effortful. And the rise of time spent online and the attendant decline in face-to-face interactions enable behaviours such as “ghosting”."https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43
#MentalHealth #Psychology #Conscientiousness #SocialMedia #Streaming #Smartphones
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Anybody know where to find scoring instructions for the DiSC? Some students have decided to use it for a project and I am coming up empty so far.
This is an old-ass #personality #assessment
#request #help #psychology #disc #conscientiousness #dominance #academic #professor
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🚨New paper in press @ JEPG🚨
Http://psyarxiv.com/8fkpy
Remember the paper showing that it’s specifically *low-conscientious* #conservatives who share fake news? It got lots of coverage. BUT it seems like that claim isn't actually true - in a new paper, we fail to replicate it in 5(!) times and also show that even the original data don't support the claim (because they look at overall sharing, not specifically at sharing of false claims).Bottom line: conservatives are more likely to share #misinformation, regardless of their level of #conscientiousness.
Check out the ungated paper: "Conscientiousness does not moderate the association between political ideology and susceptibility to fake news sharing" at http://psyarxiv.com/8fkpy
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The ability to recognize its own image in a #mirror is a famous test to explore #conscientiousness in animals. It is still a contentious issue among biologists and psychologists, and there is a vivid debate about the existence of such advance cognitive skills in #fish. A new paper respond to previous methodological criticisms. #science #biology #cognition #animalbehaviour #wrasse #mirrortest #selfrecognition
📄 Kohda et al (2022) PLoS Biology 20:e3001529 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001529