In plain language
Psychologists have long debated whether Eysenck’s psychoticism dimension — a trait marked by impulsivity, toughmindedness, and hostility — is really just the flip side of two better-known traits: agreeableness (being warm, kind, and trusting) and conscientiousness (being reliable, planful, and goal-directed). If psychoticism is redundant, one intervention that builds pro-social traits should automatically reduce anti-social ones. This study put that assumption to the test.
As part of the Wollongong Youth Study, 778 Australian Grade 10 students (average age 15.4) completed personality measures. One and two years later, the researchers collected self-reports of self-esteem, social support, health-related behaviors (alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, stimulant drinks), and religious values, plus teachers’ independent ratings of each student’s behavior, emotions, and adjustment.
The three traits turned out to do quite different jobs. Agreeableness was the only trait that predicted later social integration; conscientiousness uniquely predicted religious values; and psychoticism uniquely predicted lower self-esteem and more drug use. Even after statistically stripping agreeableness and conscientiousness out of the psychoticism items, the leftover “pure” psychoticism still predicted every outcome, including teacher-rated behavior problems. The conclusion: psychoticism is not merely the opposite of being agreeable and conscientious. Programs for teenagers may need distinct components — building empathy and planfulness is not the same as reducing bullying, fighting, and cruelty.
Key findings
- Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and psychoticism were only moderately intercorrelated (sharing no more than about 16% of their variance) and each predicted distinct outcomes 1-2 years later, after controlling for gender, socio-economic status, extraversion, openness, and neuroticism.
- Agreeableness was the only one of the three traits to uniquely predict social integration — both total level of social support and satisfaction with that support in Grade 12.
- Conscientiousness uniquely predicted stronger religious values two years later (beta = .30, p < .001).
- Psychoticism uniquely predicted lower self-esteem and greater drug use (beta = .27, p < .001), and was a stronger predictor of health-related behaviors (beta = .25) than conscientiousness (beta = -.10).
- After removing the effects of agreeableness and conscientiousness, the residual psychoticism score still correlated .88 with the original scale — 77% of its variance was not shared with A and C — and explained unique variance in all outcomes, including teacher-rated behavioral problems (3.8%), adjustment (3%), and drug use (4.4%).
- The authors conclude that psychoticism is not merely the opposite of agreeableness and conscientiousness, so adolescent interventions may need distinct components targeting anti-social tendencies (e.g., bullying, fighting, teasing) alongside pro-social skill building.
How to cite
APA
Heaven, P. C. L., Ciarrochi, J., Leeson, P., & Barkus, E. (2013). Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and psychoticism: Distinctive influences of three personality dimensions in adolescence. British Journal of Psychology, 104(4), 481-494. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12002
BibTeX
@article{heaven2013agreeableness,
author = {Heaven, Patrick C. L. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Leeson, Peter and Barkus, Emma},
title = {Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and psychoticism: Distinctive influences of three personality dimensions in adolescence},
journal = {British Journal of Psychology},
year = {2013},
volume = {104},
number = {4},
pages = {481--494},
doi = {10.1111/bjop.12002}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
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Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.