What is I-O?

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is the scientific study of the workplace. Rigor and methods of psychology are applied to issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance, and work-life balance.

Conscientiousness: Is That All There Is?

Judy Collins

Michigan State University

The 1969 song by Peggy Lee tells a tale of the stages of life during which the same question is asked repeatedly, "Is that all there is?" The song ends with the realization that, "No, that is not all—there is much more." Those are my thoughts these days, about the conscientiousness trait, especially since returning from the 1998 SIOP conference in Dallas where conscientiousness was again, for the ninth year straight, the subject of numerous symposia and posters showing the validity of conscientiousness for the prediction of work behavior. Is anyone else wondering if there is more than conscientiousness? Let it not be misunderstood, conscientiousness is recognizably an important predictor of performance and many other organizational outcomes (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991; Ones & Viswesvaran, 1996). But is it possible that this continued and concentrated focus on the validity of conscientiousness may overshadow other perhaps stronger personality predictors of job performance? Could it be that a plateau has been reached, and the time has come to move beyond conscientiousness in search of other predictor discoveries?

One construct, for example, that deserves more I-O research attention is socialization. Here, I refer to the socialization trait, defined by Gough (1948; 1994) as the tendency to comply or to not comply with the rules of a society. Reports indicate that the heritability of socialization scores range from .49 to .51 (Bouchard & McGue, 1990; Horn, Plomin, & Rosenman, 1976). Considerable theoretical and empirical research already underlies the socialization construct, primarily in clinical psychology (for reviews, see Megargee, 1972; Newmark, 1989). In I-O psychology, therefore, we need not reinvent the socialization wheel, only extend and apply that previous research to our own subdiscipline.

Preliminary evidence suggests that investigations of the relationship between socialization and job behavior may produce surprising results. In particular, a meta-analysis using data generated from primarily clinical literature (K = 45, N = 23,889) revealed the following validities for the prediction of behavior that often occurs in the workplace: violations of statutory law (e.g., white collar crime, crimes of violence, theft), r = .61; violations of societal and organizational rules (e.g., alcohol abuse, disciplinary problems), r = .47, and also supervisors ratings of performance, r = .28 (Collins & Griffin, in press). Another (criterion-related) analysis suggests the incremental validity of socialization over conscientiousness for the prediction of task and contextual job performance (Collins, 1997). Curious about this construct and its relation to conscientiousness, a colleague and I meta-analyzed those few reported correlations: the results showed corrected correlations of .37 (males) and .51 (females) (Collins & Rader, 1996). These moderate correlations do not indicate that socialization is conscientiousness, but could support the theory that conscientiousness is a subset of the multidimensional socialization construct, or vice versa. However, these meta-analytic samples were small. One way, therefore, to move beyond conscientiousness, the predictor, is through primary studies of socialization and other potential constructs and job performance. Future meta-analytic tests of construct validity can then be conducted.

TIP

Vol. 36/No. 2  October, 1998

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