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

Authors

Joshua J. Jackson, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignFollow
Dustin Wood, Wake Forest UniversityFollow
Tim Bogg, Indiana University - Bloomington
Kate E. Walton, St. John's University - New York
Peter D. Harms, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow
Brent W. Roberts, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignFollow

Date of this Version

2010

Comments

Published in the Journal of Research in Personality (2010) 44. Copyright 2010, Elsevier. Used by permission. DOI:10.1016/j.jrp.2010.06.005.

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.