Cautiousness
A facet of conscientiousness. Four items in the IPIP-NEO-120.
The sixth facet of conscientiousness is thinking before acting: not rushing in, not making rash decisions, and taking time to consider. All four items are reversed, so a high score means denying the four kinds of haste they describe. Deliberation is the older name.
What it does not mean
A low score is not stupidity, and it is not recklessness as a verdict. Quick deciders are often right, and in some work speed matters more than deliberation; the facet measures the tendency to pause, not the quality of what follows.
A high score is not timidity. Cautious people take risks; they take them after thinking.
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 do not jump into things, do not make rash decisions and think before acting. In daily life that shows as sleeping on it, reading the reviews, weighing options that others would not have noticed, and sometimes missing a chance that did not wait.
Low. People low on this facet say they jump into things without thinking, make rash decisions and rush in. In daily life that shows as fast decisions, a willingness to act on half the information, regret about some purchases and relationships, and a capacity for seizing the moment that cautious people lack.
Parent domain
- Conscientiousness: the broad trait this facet belongs to, with five sibling facets.
What the research says it predicts
In the model of impulsivity built on the Big Five, low cautiousness marks lack of premeditation, which is distinct from acting rashly under strong feeling, from sensation seeking and from failing to persevere. (Whiteside and Lynam, 2001)
Impulse control, the trait family that includes cautiousness, has the strongest links among the conscientiousness traits to lower drug use, risky driving and other behaviours that shorten life. (Bogg and Roberts, 2004)
In a meta-analysis of job performance, cautiousness added less to the prediction than achievement or dependability did. (Dudley and others, 2006)
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, cautiousness, 4 items
410,376 people
The other facets of conscientiousness
Sources and licence
Whiteside, S. P., & Lynam, D. R. (2001). The Five Factor Model and impulsivity: Using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 30(4), 669-689. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00064-7
Bogg, T., & Roberts, B. W. (2004). Conscientiousness and health-related behaviors: A meta-analysis of the leading behavioral contributors to mortality. Psychological Bulletin, 130(6), 887-919. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.130.6.887
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
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