Visiting the Role of Conscientiousness in Research Methods : A Neglected Bias in Sampling

Although conscientiousness is found to be a fundamental trait that has relations with many variables, its role in sampling is ignored to a large extent. By two studies, this paper investigated the bias originated from neglecting difference of conscientiousness structure and showed that the bias does exist in conscientiousness studies. The author concluded that the sample used in many of current conscientiousness studies may be characterized as high-conscientiousness, which did significant harm to the effects of conscientiousness on objective performance in conscientiousness research. Implications to conscientiousness-related studies are discussed