#conscientiousness

By: John Burn-Murdoch

Published: Aug 8, 2025

NEW: Is the internet changing our personalities for the worse?

Conscientiousness and extroversion are down, neuroticism up, with young adults leading the charge.

This is a really consequential shift, and there’s a lot going on here, so let’s get into the weeds 

First up, personality analysis can feel vague, and you might well ask why it even matters?

On the first of those, the finding of distinct personality traits is robust. This field of research has been around for decades and holds up pretty well, even across cultures. 

On the second, studies consistently find personality shapes life outcomes.

In fact, personality traits — esp conscientiousness and neuroticism — are stronger predictors of career success, divorce and mortality than someone’s socio-economic background or cognitive abilities. 

Highly conscientious people (dependable, disciplined, committed) fare best of all. They live the longest, succeed at work, their relationships last.

This makes sense. Life isn’t just about knowing what you should do or having the resources to do it, it’s about following through. 

Conscientiousness is especially critical in the modern world. Life today is full of temptations. From hyper-engaging digital media to online gambling, the ability to ignore it all and put long-term wellbeing ahead of short-term kicks becomes a superpower. 

Generative AI could supercharge this dynamic.

A high-C student might use an LLM as a personal tutor to strengthen their knowledge of a concept; their low-C counterpart might task the same LLM with writing their essay, foregoing knowledge acquisition altogether. 

So, that’s conscientiousness.

At the other end of the spectrum, people high in neuroticism (anxious, often tense, feel emotions very strongly) tend to face more challenges in life.

Relationships break down, work life is difficult, stress can bring health problems. 

That’s what makes this chart so important.

People are changing in ways that decades of research suggests will lead to worse life outcomes, and this is particularly true of today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings.

First up, personality analysis can feel vague, and you might well ask why it even matters?

On the first of those, the finding of distinct personality traits is robust. This field of research has been around for decades and holds up pretty well, even across cultures. 

On the second, studies consistently find personality shapes life outcomes.

In fact, personality traits — esp conscientiousness and neuroticism — are stronger predictors of career success, divorce and mortality than someone’s socio-economic background or cognitive abilities. 

Highly conscientious people (dependable, disciplined, committed) fare best of all. They live the longest, succeed at work, their relationships last.

This makes sense. Life isn’t just about knowing what you should do or having the resources to do it, it’s about following through. 

Conscientiousness is especially critical in the modern world. Life today is full of temptations. From hyper-engaging digital media to online gambling, the ability to ignore it all and put long-term wellbeing ahead of short-term kicks becomes a superpower. 

Generative AI could supercharge this dynamic.

A high-C student might use an LLM as a personal tutor to strengthen their knowledge of a concept; their low-C counterpart might task the same LLM with writing their essay, foregoing knowledge acquisition altogether. 

So, that’s conscientiousness.

At the other end of the spectrum, people high in neuroticism (anxious, often tense, feel emotions very strongly) tend to face more challenges in life.

Relationships break down, work life is difficult, stress can bring health problems. 

That’s what makes this chart so important.

People are changing in ways that decades of research suggests will lead to worse life outcomes, and this is particularly true of today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings.

If the headline terms still feel fuzzy, we can dig into the more detailed traits they’re made up of.

Here are some of the sub-traits inside conscientiousness:

Young people say they increasingly struggle to make plans and follow through on them. They feel distracted, careless.

They also say they feel less outgoing and talkative (true of everyone, but especially young adults). Young people also report feeling less helpful and less trusting, as well as more argumentative.

Again: these are people’s own self-assessments, not others’ descriptions of them.

These detailed traits lead me to point the finger at the digital world.

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 last minute. 

To put it another way: distractions derail our intentions. And we’re now more distracted than ever.

Distraction is toxic to conscientiousness. 

As @kylascan has written, the sheer convenience of the online world makes real-life commitments feel messy and effortful

The in-person world encourages conscientiousness. The digital world gives you an opt-out.

The rise of time spent online and accompanying decline in face-to-face interactions mean less social policing of bad behaviours like “ghosting”. See @_alice_evans here:

If you’re low-C on the internet, you don’t pay the price. Not immediately, at least...

And note the timing of that steep young adult dip in extroversion:

The pandemic years when young people bore the brunt of restrictions on socialising in order to protect others from harm.

Long the most extroverted group in society, young adults are now the most introverted.

But I want to end on a more empowering note:

Unlike parental background and genetic make-up, there is a wealth of evidence that personality is malleable — what has been eroded can be rebuilt. 

Conscientiousness will separate those who just survive from those who thrive in the 21st century. We can each decide which half of that divide we fall on — but ironically that will take some dedication.

Here’s my article in full:

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By: John Burn-Murdoch

Published: Aug 8, 2025

What are the key attributes that shape the length and quality of our careers, relationships and lives more broadly? The socio-economic environment we grow up in certainly has a substantial influence, with parental prosperity acting as a propellant or a key to unlock crucial doors. Cognitive abilities are another obvious one: they enable better decision-making in all aspects of life. But another factor often gets less credit despite being just as important: personality.

In fact, studies consistently find that traits such as conscientiousness (the quality of being dependable and disciplined), emotional stability or agreeableness have a stronger link with professional success, relationship durability and longevity than the links between those outcomes and someone’s intelligence or socio-economic background.

Of all personality types, conscientious people tend to fare best on a number of key measures. They live the longest, have the most career success and are less likely to go through divorce. They even manage to hold down a job during recessions. Intuitively, this makes sense. Life isn’t just about knowing what you should do, or having the resources to do it, it’s about following through. Being motivated and persistent is a huge help.

Some studies suggest the advantage of conscientiousness is growing over time, and it’s easy to imagine why. When contemporary daily life is full of temptations — from always-on mobile internet and the lures of social media and online gambling, to hyper-palatable foods — the ability to ignore it all and put long-term wellbeing ahead of short-term kicks becomes a superpower.

Generative artificial intelligence could supercharge this dynamic. An industrious student who is not deterred by a challenge might use a large language model as a personal tutor to strengthen their knowledge of a concept; their less conscientious counterpart might task the same LLM with writing their essay, foregoing knowledge acquisition altogether.

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”.

Collapsing conscientiousness is not the only personality shift visible in the data. Neuroticism — a function of the much-discussed increase in anxiety — has risen almost as much. Young adults also report feeling less amiable and outgoing. There’s a particularly steep drop shown in the latter during the pandemic, when young people bore the brunt of restrictions on contact in order to protect others from harm. In fact, long the most extroverted group in society, young adults are now the most introverted.

While the terminology of personality can feel vague, the science is solid. Decades of research consistently finds that all these shifts are in the direction associated with negative outcomes down the line. Life is full of challenges. A less committed, less connected and more easily distressed cohort will navigate them less well.

C.

I do, and thanks. I hope if you also celebrate it, you are enjoying it. :)

but there's no such reaction to people on the opposite end, those with such a strong Central Executive that Getting Things Done is *all they know how to do* to the point that their entire life is a living to-do list, and then they block out & blind themselves to relevant information because they're so intent on The Agenda. we don't stigmatize that.