Conscientiousness is the big C in the OCEAN model of personality traits – and when it comes to your money, it’s the trait you really want to develop. We find out why, and how.
Ever wondered why you are the way you are when it comes to spending, saving, and generally managing your money? It could have a lot to do with your personality. The Five-Factor model of personality traits (also known as the OCEAN model) provides a valuable tool to measure and understand yourself – and, if you want to, change your behaviour to enjoy better health and happiness.
The five personality traits in the OCEAN model match each of the letters:
• O is for Openness to experience (are you curious or cautious?)
• C is for Conscientiousness (are you organised or easy-going?)
• E is for Extraversion (are you outgoing or solitary?)
• A is for Agreeableness (are you compassionate or detached?)
• N is for Neuroticism (are you sensitive or secure?)
As with all things, the OCEAN model works on a scale, so you’ll never be 100% conscientious, for example. And because the five factors work with each other, it all adds up to a pretty complex personality profile
Having already explored Openness, it’s time to investigate the Big C – conscientiousness – and how it governs your spending and saving behaviour.
What is conscientiousness?
Conscientiousness is, mostly, seen as a positive trait. “Highly conscientious people are more organised and responsible and tend to follow through with their obligations, to be more impulse controlled and to follow rules,” says University of Illinois psychology professor Brent Roberts, who led a study into the trait in 2009.
People who are more conscientious tend to live longer, are more likely to exercise, eat nutritious foods and adhere to vitamin or drug regimens, and are less likely to smoke, abuse drugs or take unwarranted risks. They also tend to have more stable relationships than people with low conscientiousness scores.
Roberts’s study, which looked at adults over age 50, found that women get an added health benefit when they’re paired with a partner who is conscientious and neurotic. “There’s been kind of an individualistic bias in personality research,” he said. “But human beings are not islands. We are an incredibly interdependent species.”
He added that even if you are highly conscientious, you could still benefit from a spouse’s conscientiousness. “It makes sense that regardless of what your attributes are, if you have people in your social network that have resources, such as conscientiousness, that can always help,” he said.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that if you’re too conscientious, you could come across as being stubborn or set in your ways.
Conscientiousness and your cash
When it comes to money, this might be a good thing. For example, a 2019 study published by the American Psychological Association found that people who are more Agreeable or more Open (so high on the A and O spectra) are likely to spend their retirement savings at a faster rate than those who are more Conscientious and Extroverted (high on the C and E spectra).
“Little is known about what personally motivates retirees to withdraw money from their investment portfolios, as most studies on portfolio withdrawal rates address technical issues, such as minimising risk of financial shortfall or making spending adjustments based on perceived life expectancy,” said study author Sarah Asebedo of Texas Tech University. ‘The purpose of this study was to investigate how personality traits are related to portfolio withdrawal decisions of retirees.’
What they found was that people with greater conscientiousness, extroversion, positive emotions and feelings of control over their finances withdrew from their retirement portfolios at a lower rate than those with greater openness, agreeableness, neuroticism and negative emotions.
Before retirement, your personality is also a good predictor of your spending habits – and, according to a 2016 Cambridge University study, people who spend more on purchases that aligned with their personality traits experience greater life satisfaction. The researchers compared people’s actual purchases to their personalities using the OCEAN model, and found that people generally spent more money on products that match their personality. For example, a highly extroverted person spent approximately £52 more each year on pub nights than an introverted person. Similarly, a highly conscientiousness person spent £124 more annually on health and fitness than a person low in conscientiousness.
You’d expect that… but what you wouldn’t necessarily expect is the link to happiness. “Historically, studies had found a weak relationship between money and overall wellbeing,” said study co-author Joe Gladstone of Cambridge Judge Business School. “Our study breaks new ground by mining actual bank-transaction data and demonstrating that spending can increase our happiness when it is spent on goods and services that fit our personalities and so meet our psychological needs.”
Changing your personality
But what if you’re not all that conscientious? Can you change your personality? Absolutely, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley. The researchers found that certain personality changes do occur in middle adulthood. Conscientiousness increased all the way from ages 21 to 60, with the biggest increases happening in a person’s 20s.
So basically, as you grow up and start working in the real world, you’ll naturally become more organised and disciplined. Or, as the study authors put it: “Increasing conscientiousness and agreeableness and decreasing neuroticism in adulthood may indicate increasing maturity – people becoming on the average better adapted as they get older, well into middle age.”
And of course, if the change doesn’t come
naturally, you could always – as that University of Illinois study
suggests – just
marry well.
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