The world needs conscientious people, and conscientious people seem poised to navigate the world more easily. A huge drop in average conscientiousness could be quite a big deal. And so we've seen a collective freakout after the Financial Times reported on a "troubling decline in conscientiousness," complete with a graph that seems to show young people's conscientiousness level dropping steeply over the past decade. A chart caption affixed to the article suggested that conscientiousness was "in freefall."
But the allegation that conscientiousness is cratering doesn't seem to hold up. The article draws on a survey that measures conscientiousness on a scale of 9 (the lowest possible score) to 45. The youngest group of respondents, ages 16 to 39, had an average score of 35.51 in survey data from 2015 to 2017 according to an analysis of the data from the Stetson University psychologist Chris Ferguson. In 2023–2025, this age group's average score was 33.26.
