Conscientiousness is also correlated with job performance, and is about on par with IQ for predicting lifetime earnings. Agreeableness (also a Big-Five trait) i

Conscientiousness is also correlated with job performance, and is about on par with IQ for predicting lifetime earnings. Agreeableness (also a Big-Five trait) is also quite important in cooperative settings (though both have small effects relative to IQ for single shot task performance). http://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness%20and%20online%20education#conscientiousness http://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness%20and%20online%20educ... has a nice overview of the literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness does a reasonable job describing the trait. Edit: while we're listing large causal factors for work performance, I feel appalled I forgot to mention genetics... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9739126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9739126