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 f

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