It’s the personality trait that leads most directly to performance. But new evidence suggests it’s under threat for all of us. There are things we can do to cultivate it.
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Something curious is happening with conscientiousness. Several recent studies suggest that we may have underestimated the personality trait’s direct impact on success, happiness and longevity. At the same time, new data indicates that conscientiousness is plummeting and most alarmingly among the young. An eye-opening new piece of research among students, suggest that AI might be a double-edged sword. Those tempting cognitive shortcuts appear to have a corrosive effect on our conscientiousness. But there are practical steps we can take to cultivate it.
So why does conscientiousness matter?
While the other big four personality traits (openness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) are interesting for a host of reasons, their effect on performance appears to be fairly neutral. Not so with conscientiousness. Evidence of a ‘conscientiousness premium’ is emerging, both in academic performance and longer-term earning potential.
Let’s start by looking at education.
A meta-analysis of more than 70,000 students by the researcher Arthur Poropat identified conscientiousness as the trait most directly associated with academic performance, even after controlling for cognitive ability.
And how does this translate into the workplace?
A 2026 meta-analysis of 11 large longitudinal datasets involving about 134,500 people found a reciprocal relationship between conscientiousness and income. Interestingly, not only does conscientiousness mean that we earn more, as we earn more we become more conscientious.
This of course, raises a concern. Regardless of whether it’s chicken or egg, if the better off tend to be more conscientious and conscientiousness leads to being better off, does this exacerbate already increasing inequality? It seems that concern would be well-founded.
How conscientious you are is closely associated with how well educated your mother is.
As mothers still tend to do most of the childcare in the typical household, this would suggest a strong association between conscientiousness and the way in which we are parented, especially in early life.
It appears that the benefits of conscientiousness accumulate across generations. One longitudinal study followed 347 adolescents for more than 20 years, subsequently examining 282 of their children. Higher social economic status encouraged parenting that fostered conscientiousness; conscientiousness then predicted socioeconomic success, which in turn helped sustain adult conscientiousness.
Worryingly (at least for those who worry about inequality) the flip side is also true. People from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to struggle with conscientiousness, which in turn leads to greater disadvantage. The cumulative effects tend to spiral in the opposite direction.
Distraction economy
This is compounded by the ‘distraction economy’ which relentlessly envelops us. The more we can be lulled into clicking and scrolling, the more the growth KPIs of the big tech companies head upwards, along with their all-important share price. This is the mission to which many of the smartest brains on our planet are currently committed. Distraction is not merely a byproduct of the modern digital environment; it is its lifeblood. And the disadvantaged feel the effects disproportionately.
A systematic review of 37 studies found children and adolescents from disadvantage backgrounds tend to spend significantly more time on screens. This is against the backdrop of increasing evidence that smartphone use and social media are negatively associated with academic achievement.
Contrast this with what you might see in more affluent homes – structured extracurricular activities, private study space, quality time with parents – and the reason for the ever-widening gap becomes apparent. Some argue that we face a new form of technology-driven inequality: not so much access to technology, but protection from it.
And just as the disadvantaged are affected disproportionately, so are the young. There’s increasing evidence that in our age of social media, young people are more neurotic and less agreeable. But above all conscientiousness is the trait that is plummeting.
We are grateful to the data scientist John Burn-Murdoch for drawing attention to this. Conscientiousness has fallen among all age groups, but the gradient of the decline correlates directly with age. Between 2014 and 2024 conscientiousness declines for all age groups, but among 16- to 39-year-olds it virtually collapses from approximately 47% of the population to less than 24%.
What’s more, analysing the Understanding America data Burn-Murdoch shows that for 16- to 39-year-olds over the same period, self-rating for conscientiousness has plummeted, along with perseverance and seeing plans through, while carelessness has risen steeply.
So what happens when we throw AI into the mix?
Large language models (LLMs) have only been readily available for the last couple of years of the period from which the data was gathered. However, a fascinating study of students in China indicates what we might expect to see unfolding in higher education.
A 2026 study by Stromberg, Lei, and Wu, The generative AI learning penalty looked at 30 months of panel data on 26,811 Chinese students, combining homework records with high-stakes entrance exams. They compared changes among AI adopters with students who had not used AI.
The results were clear and as we might expect. AI adopters completed their work quicker and gained significantly higher scores. So far, kudos for AI. But that’s not the whole picture. What follows is particularly interesting.
If we rerun the comparison again but this time using exam conditions without access to AI, those students who appeared to flourish when using AI found that their performance slumped to new lows when the AI scaffolding was removed. The effect was a drop of about 18-24% in performance.
The erosion of conscientiousness
The explanation? The erosion of conscientiousness. Those students who had become used to adopting AI got used to the habit of “cognitive offloading” or “effort substitution.” This is consistent with studies that show that regular users of AI for writing, find that their writing skills atrophy. What’s more, their grasp of the subject matter diminishes; and they are less capable of discussing it or answering questions about it in real time.
It’s often said that AI will become a great leveller. This means the only way to differentiate ourselves will be the quality of our thinking, in person and on our feet; capable of engaging, discussing, thinking in real time, and showing grace under pressure. Cognitive ability grows by embracing cognitive friction not by avoiding it.We humans need a little grit in the oyster.
Socratic tutor
The conclusion that Burn-Murdoch draws? It’s not that the smartest and most successful students are those who avoid AI, it will be those who use AI as a “Socratic tutor”.
In other words, don’t use AI to outsource your thinking. Use it to challenge your thinking. Enter into a dialogue.
Imagine what a dialogue looks like with a Socratic tutor. What would you be asking your bot?
- What’s the toughest question I might be asked?
- Where is my proposition weak?
- Where is my thinking flawed?
- What are the questions I should be asking but I’m missing?
Now combine that approach with the power of technology and you have a powerful proposition.
To find out how we can help leaders in your organisation to be more impactful, influential and persuasive visit www.threshold.co.uk
