What Do Conscientious People Do? Development and Validation of the Behavioral Indicators of Conscientiousness (BIC)

Overview

Journal J Res Pers

Date 2011 Feb 1

PMID 21278818

Citations 51

Authors

Joshua J Jackson

Dustin Wood

Tim Bogg

Kate E Walton

Peter D Harms

Brent W Roberts

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Typical assessments of personality traits collapse behaviors, thoughts, and feelings into a single measure without distinguishing between these different manifestations. To address this lack of specification, the current study develops and validates a measure that assesses a number of broad behaviors associated with the personality trait of conscientiousness (the Behavioral Indicators of Conscientiousness; BIC). Findings suggest that the lower-order structure of conscientious behaviors is mostly similar to the lower-order structure in extant trait measures. Furthermore, a daily diary method was used to validate the BIC against frequency counts of conscientious behavior. Overall, the results identify specific behaviors that conscientious individuals tend to perform and highlight possible advantages of this approach over broad trait assessment.

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