Field Guide to the Flake

Spontaneity is all you can count on from these careless types. Here's how to shape them up.

Earth to flake! Come in, flake! That space cadet, sweet though she may be, is always losing her wallet, showing up late, canceling plans, forgetting Mom's birthday, generally shirking her duties, and driving those in her orbit crazy. Is she selfish, or just a free spirit who needs a little leeway?

According to Brent Roberts, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Champaign, scatterbrains are also lacking in conscientiousness—a fundamental personality trait that is equal parts industriousness, impulse control, organization, interpersonal responsibility, and conventionality.

Highly conscientiousness people, by way of contrast, do very well for themselves. They get better grades, are seen as more honest, do better in their jobs, and are less likely to get divorced than the average person. They even tend to live longer, since they ward off the most preventable causes of death by not smoking, drinking, engaging in risky sexual behavior, or eating bad food as often as the rest of us. (Women tend to be more conscientious than men.)

When you're in the mood for fun, however, the space cadet is simply more enjoyable to be around, since he's prone to spontaneity. But contrary to myth, he is no more creative than average. Roberts points to classic research showing that successful creative people are not just unconventional, but also focused and hard-working.

Most flakes improve with time. "The way our society is structured is a path toward responsibility. Bad things happen to you if you don't increase your conscientiousness level," says Roberts. Specifically, impulse control starts to rise in the 20s and continues to increase through middle age. (The only exceptions in Roberts' data set were women who regularly smoked marijuana.) Roberts theorizes that the general upsurge in conscientiousness is caused by increased social investment in one's own family and in a community. "These investments call for people to be more responsible, and they respond to it." The longer one is married, for example, the more conscientious he or she becomes.

Flakes should not attempt to shape up by throwing themselves into extremely demanding environments. It takes a lot of self-regulation to fit in to a buttoned-up office. In this taxing state, a flake may lash out at superiors or self-sabotage in other ways. Roberts recommends challenging oneself within a more comfortable niche instead. "Take academia. I don't have someone looking over my shoulder. It allows me to be flaky," says Roberts, a slow e-mail responder who thinks the trait must have as-yet-undiscovered benefits. "This resonates with me and a lot of other psychologists, but it's hard to show it empirically. I'm just afraid that life would be boring if everyone were highly conscientious."