Achievement-striving
A facet of conscientiousness. Four items in the IPIP-NEO-120.
The fourth facet of conscientiousness is working hard and aiming high: doing more than is asked, putting effort in, and not being content with just enough. It is the ambition and drive inside conscientiousness, and the facet most tied to how people do at work.
What it does not mean
A low score is not laziness as a moral failing. Low scorers put in what is needed and keep their effort for what they care about; many have decided that work is not where their life is, which is a choice rather than a deficiency.
A high score is not talent or success. Striving is about effort; results depend on ability, opportunity and luck, and the trait has costs in rest, relationships and the ability to stop.
Four items make a short scale. A facet score moves more between attempts than the 24-item domain score, and it describes a tendency in ordinary life as the person reports it, not a diagnosis of anything.
High and low in daily life
High. People high on this facet say they work hard and do more than is expected of them. In daily life that shows as first in and last out, a drive to be the best at whatever they take up, a dislike of coasting, and difficulty with holidays. Others experience them as driven, and sometimes as hard to keep up with.
Low. People low on this facet say they do just enough to get by and put little time and effort into their work. In daily life that shows as a clear line between work and life, effort spent where it matters to them, and a relaxed attitude to ambition that strivers find baffling and sometimes envy.
Parent domain
- Conscientiousness: the broad trait this facet belongs to, with five sibling facets.
What the research says it predicts
In a meta-analysis of conscientiousness and job performance, the achievement facet predicted performance across jobs and added to the prediction beyond the broad trait. (Dudley and others, 2006)
Facets of the Big Five predict job performance beyond their domains, and the conscientiousness facets are where the gain is largest. (Judge and others, 2013)
Achievement-striving belongs to the industriousness aspect of conscientiousness, with self-efficacy and self-discipline. (DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson, 2007)
Where people fall
The spread of scores
Curve height shows how common each score is; the darker middle holds half of all people. If you have taken a test on this device, your marker is drawn on.
IPIP-NEO-120, achievement-striving, 4 items
410,376 people
The other facets of conscientiousness
Sources and licence
Dudley, N. M., Orvis, K. A., Lebiecki, J. E., & Cortina, J. M. (2006). A meta-analytic investigation of conscientiousness in the prediction of job performance: Examining the intercorrelations and the incremental validity of narrow traits. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(1), 40-57. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.1.40
Judge, T. A., Rodell, J. B., Klinger, R. L., Simon, L. S., & Crawford, E. R. (2013). Hierarchical representations of the five-factor model of personality in predicting job performance: Integrating three organizing frameworks with two theoretical perspectives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(6), 875-925. doi:10.1037/a0033901
DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 880-896. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880
Instrument: IPIP-NEO-120. Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003 Key: https://ipip.ori.org/30FacetNEO-PI-RItems.htm.
Norms: Johnson, J. A. IPIP-NEO-120 public dataset (IPIP120.dat), OSF component wxvth of osf.io/tbmh5, https://osf.io/wxvth/.
Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm
Instrument: IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers. Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26 Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm.
Norms: Open-Source Psychometrics Project, IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers responses (IPIP-FFM-data-8Nov2018.zip), 1,015,342 responses collected 2016 to 2018, https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/.
Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm