The way this topic appears to me is that there are different tasks or considerations that require different levels of conscientiousness for the optimal solution. In this frame, one should just always apply the appropriate level of conscientiousness in every context, and the trait conscientiousness is just a bias people have in one direction or the other that one should try to eliminate.
This frame is useful, because it opens up the possibility to do things like “assess required conscientiousness for task”, “become aware of bias”, “reduce bias”, etc. But it may also be wrong in an important way. It’s somewhere between difficult to impossible to tell how much conscientiousness is required in any particular case, what’s more, even what constitutes an optimal solution may not be obvious. In this frame, trait conscientiousness is not bias, but diversity that nature threw against the problem to do selection with.
I have trouble understanding why, in this case, everyone would need to have a consistently high or consistently low level of it across a wide range of contexts; and why, for example, one can’t just try a range of approaches of varying consientiousness levels and learn to optimize from the experience. It isn’t necessary in any of the examples above to have a person involved with consistently low levels of it, just a person who in that particular case takes the low-conscientiousness approach. This way we could still fall back on the interpretation as a bias and blame nature for just being inefficient doing the evolution biologically instead of memetically.
Most people who hire practice psychographic nepotism — hiring people with personality traits like their own to do things like they do. Since those people are almost always managers, you get conscientiousness all the way down unless there’s some kind of Human Resources black swan event.
Of course, it will depend to some extent on the job what traits are more beneficial. But what I rarely see are mangers who say “I want to hire someone that complements my skill set.” For example, conscientiousness doesn’t seem to be correlated with innovation at the group level, so why add more of it unless your hiring someone to do routine things well. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1069397111409124
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s possible with all Big 5 traits to practice being more of the opposite of whatever your trait is and adopt it on an as-beneficial basis (e.g. have an extroverted person be more introverted or an agreeable person be more disagreeable in circumstances where one is the better strategy).
That may be a strategy worth trying. I’ve never asked a high-conscientious person “Could you try coming to work looking a bit more disheveled? Try to stay out of Excel unless it’s really really really important. Ohh and leave some crumbs and an empty soda can on your desk when you go home for the day.”
The way this topic appears to me is that there are different tasks or considerations that require different levels of conscientiousness for the optimal solution. In this frame, one should just always apply the appropriate level of conscientiousness in every context, and the trait conscientiousness is just a bias people have in one direction or the other that one should try to eliminate.
This frame is useful, because it opens up the possibility to do things like “assess required conscientiousness for task”, “become aware of bias”, “reduce bias”, etc. But it may also be wrong in an important way. It’s somewhere between difficult to impossible to tell how much conscientiousness is required in any particular case, what’s more, even what constitutes an optimal solution may not be obvious. In this frame, trait conscientiousness is not bias, but diversity that nature threw against the problem to do selection with.
I have trouble understanding why, in this case, everyone would need to have a consistently high or consistently low level of it across a wide range of contexts; and why, for example, one can’t just try a range of approaches of varying consientiousness levels and learn to optimize from the experience. It isn’t necessary in any of the examples above to have a person involved with consistently low levels of it, just a person who in that particular case takes the low-conscientiousness approach. This way we could still fall back on the interpretation as a bias and blame nature for just being inefficient doing the evolution biologically instead of memetically.
Most people who hire practice psychographic nepotism — hiring people with personality traits like their own to do things like they do. Since those people are almost always managers, you get conscientiousness all the way down unless there’s some kind of Human Resources black swan event.
Of course, it will depend to some extent on the job what traits are more beneficial. But what I rarely see are mangers who say “I want to hire someone that complements my skill set.” For example, conscientiousness doesn’t seem to be correlated with innovation at the group level, so why add more of it unless your hiring someone to do routine things well. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1069397111409124
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s possible with all Big 5 traits to practice being more of the opposite of whatever your trait is and adopt it on an as-beneficial basis (e.g. have an extroverted person be more introverted or an agreeable person be more disagreeable in circumstances where one is the better strategy).
That may be a strategy worth trying. I’ve never asked a high-conscientious person “Could you try coming to work looking a bit more disheveled? Try to stay out of Excel unless it’s really really really important. Ohh and leave some crumbs and an empty soda can on your desk when you go home for the day.”