Squared Away Blog

November 10, 2011

Are You Conscientious?

In a recent study of five personality traits, conscientiousness was the strongest determinant of an individual’s financial well-being.

Angela Lee Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania and David Weir at the University of Michigan compared how people did on a personality test with their financial well-being after age 50. They examined the Big Five traits: conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, extroversion, and openness to experience.

Their finding about the power of conscientiousness adds to a spate of research combining psychology and economics to predict why people earn more, save more, or prepare for retirement. In another study, Australian researchers found that a child’s level of self-control, as early as age 3, can predict whether he or she will experience financial problems later in life.

So, what is conscientiousness and do you have it? I could tell you about it, but watch the video interview of Duckworth instead, on the University of Michigan Center for Retirement Research’s website.

Hint: is your desk clean?

Full disclosure: The research cited in this post was funded by a grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Retirement Research Consortium, which also funds this blog. The opinions and conclusions expressed are solely those of the blog’s author and do not represent the opinions or policy of SSA or any agency of the federal government.