At the first glance it seems that conscientiousness and responsibility are almost the same.

Conscientious people are responsible, people lacking in conscientiousness are irresponsible.

But to me it seems that there is actually a fundamental difference between the two.

Conscientiousness is all about winning. It's about ambition, about making sure you advance in career, making sure your social standing and reputation is improving, etc. It's also about self-discipline and work-ethic, but still in service of success. The main reason why conscientious people are responsible is because responsible behaviors typically lead to success. But in situations where irresponsible or unethical behaviors lead to success, conscientious people might be more likely to actually engage in such irresponsible and unethical behaviors than their less conscientious peers. For example if a conscientious person who is very concerned about the success of their company, concludes that they can get away with giving their client a product that's of less quality than agreed, they will do it, if it saves them costs. Saving costs counts as success, and as long as they can get away with delivering lower quality products, this counts as success too. Who cares about literal interpretation of specifications of the product that have been agreed with the client.

The same is true about finding loopholes in law that can be utilized in ethically questionable ways, that still lead to success for the company and improve the bottom line. Conscientious people will try to use them all as long as they can get away with it, and as long as it brings success to the company.

On the other hand, I've encountered people who are not conscientious, but are responsible when it comes to certain things that matter. For example a person can be messy and untidy, they can have poor self-discipline and they might procrastinate a lot. This kind of behavior won't take them far when it comes to achieving success, but such disposition doesn't mean they are irresponsible or dishonest.

I've seen such people behaving in ways traditionally counted as "conscientious" not out of their innate conscientiousness, but out of other motives. For example they will fasten their seatbelts, because they want to obey the law (agreeableness), and because they are afraid of crashes (neuroticism). They might be reserved and socially inhibited out of neuroticism too - this will help them avoid trouble. They will keep their promises, out of agreeableness, and honesty-humility. When it comes to important stuff like checking if a medicine is expired or avoiding things they are allergic to, they are very cautious and careful, out of neuroticism (anxiety). They might want to conscientiously report and pay all the taxes, again out of agreeableness and honesty-humility. A more conscientious person (but with less integrity), might look for loopholes in taxes too. Less conscientious, but more honest or humble person, might intentionally want to pay all the taxes in full because they think it's the right thing to do.

In short, conscientious people tend to be honest because this typically leads to better outcomes for themselves, but when they conclude that they can get away with less honesty, they choose this path. On the other hand, people who are intrinsically honest, who don't care that much for success, will choose more honest path, even when it will impose significant costs to them.

In short, when it comes to evaluating someone's responsibility and integrity, I think agreeableness and honesty-humility are more revealing traits than conscientiousness.

Also, a healthy dose of neuroticism, can keep people out of trouble, and make sure they don't behave in reckless ways.

All this is not to say that highly conscientious people can't be honest, humble and agreeable. They can, but when they are like that, their honesty, humility and agreeableness come from their other traits, and not from conscientiousness itself. Being conscientious isn't exactly the same as being law abiding citizen and there are examples of high conscientiousness people who aren't very law abiding, and low conscientiousness people who are very law abiding.

In short, while conscientiousness is no. 1 success generating trait, I think it's given more credit than it deserves, and it's often equated with integrity and good moral character, and there's no factual basis for this. Even the name "conscientiousness" is problematic because it implies moral character (conscience).

Wondering if I am onto something... Is my understanding correct?

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