Orderliness
A facet of conscientiousness. Four items in the IPIP-NEO-120.
The second facet of conscientiousness is liking for tidiness and things in their place: putting things back, keeping a room clear, and taking pleasure in order. The site also measures it on its own with ten items. It is the surroundings side of conscientiousness, and the one people usually mean by perfectionism about their environment.
What it does not mean
A low score is not laziness, and it is not a sign of poor work. Many untidy people are productive, punctual and reliable; the facet is about the state of their desk, not the state of their output. Order and industriousness are different sides of conscientiousness and vary separately.
A high score is not fussiness, and it is not perfectionism in the sense of never being satisfied. Orderly people like things in their place and feel better when they are.
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 like to tidy up and put things back in their proper place. In daily life that shows as a clear desk, labelled folders, a kitchen where everything has a home, and irritation at other people's clutter. The cost is time spent arranging that others spend doing.
Low. People low on this facet say they leave a mess, leave their belongings around and forget to put things back. In daily life that shows as piles that only they can navigate, a search for keys most mornings, and a tolerance for clutter that orderly people find hard to be around. Many low scorers know exactly where everything is.
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 order facet added little beyond the broad trait, while achievement and dependability added most. (Dudley and others, 2006)
Orderliness is one of the two aspects of conscientiousness, distinct from industriousness, and the two can be high or low independently. (DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson, 2007)
Order emerges as a facet of its own in every major personality questionnaire that measures conscientiousness. (Roberts and others, 2005)
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, orderliness, 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
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
Roberts, B. W., Chernyshenko, O. S., Stark, S., & Goldberg, L. R. (2005). The structure of conscientiousness: An empirical investigation based on seven major personality questionnaires. Personnel Psychology, 58(1), 103-139. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00301.x
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