Conscientiousness Research: A Narrative Review
Tiffany Field
The current literature on conscientiousness includes its effects on feelings, cognitive function, behaviors and health. The feelings include positive affect, less anxiety and depression and less pain interference. Positive effects for cognitive function include greater accuracy on a visual search task, better learning goals, higher grades, greater achievement and less cognitive decline. Behavioral effects that appeared in this current literature on conscientiousness include less Tik Tok use and fewer conduct problems. The effects on health include better sleep, fewer physical symptoms and less cardiometabolic risk. Predictors of conscientiousness in this literature include genetic factors, morningness, and parent-child relationships. A potential underlying biological mechanism that appeared was the efficiency of the salience/ventral attention network (prefrontal cortex and anterior insula). Methodological limitations of this literature include the predominantly university student samples and the almost exclusive use of mediation/moderation analyses.
