Quiet Virtue: The Conscientious
The everyday signs of conscientiousness (认真尽责)—being punctual, careful in doing work, self-disciplined, and scrupulous (一丝不苟的) in attending to responsibilities—are typical characteristics of the model organizational citizen, the people who keep things running as they should. They follow the rules, help out, and are concerned about the people they work with. It’s the conscientious worker who helps newers or updates people who return after an absence, who gets to work on time and never abuses sick leaves, who always gets things done on deadline.
Conscientiousness is a key to success in any field. In studies of job performance, outstanding effectiveness for almost all jobs, from semi-skilled labor to sales and management, depends on conscientiousness. It is particularly important for outstanding performance in jobs at the lower levels of an organization: the secretary whose message taking is perfect, the delivery truck driver who is always on time.
Among sales representatives for a large American car manufacturer, those who were most conscientious had the largest volume of sales. Conscientiousness also offers a buffer (缓冲) against the threat of job loss in today’s constantly changing market, because employees with this quality are among the most valued. For the sales representatives, their level of conscientiousness mattered almost as much as their sales in determining who stayed on.
There is an air around highly conscientious people that makes them seem even better than they actually are. Their reputation for dependability influences managers’ evaluations of their work, giving them higher evaluations than objective measures of their performance would predict.
But conscientiousness in the absence of social skills can lead to problems. Since conscientious people demand so much of themselves, they can hold other people to their own standards, and so be overly judgmental when others don’t show the same high levels of model behavior. Factory workers in Great Britain and the United States who were extremely conscientious, for example, tended to criticize co-workers even about failures that seemed unimportant to those they criticized, which damaged their relationships.
When conscientiousness takes the form of living up to expectations, it can discourage creativity. In creative professions like art or advertising, openness to wild ideas and spontaneity (自发性) are scarce and in demand. Success in such occupations calls for a balance, however; without enough conscientiousness to follow through, people bee mere dreamers, with nothing to show for their imaginativeness.
Strict
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(答案→)Strict
解析：
【文章大意】本文是议论文，描述的是“认真尽责”这种美德的特征、在人们的生活和工作等方面发挥的重大作用和可能由这种美德所引起的问题。文章难度适中，但是所需要的词汇有5道题在原文中不能找到，需要学生归纳总结信息，所以有一定的难度。
【小题1】从第一段第一句可知认真尽责的人准时、工作认真、自律性强、处理问题一丝不苟，所以说他们对自己要求严格。
【小题2】从第一段第二句可知认真尽责的人乐于助人。
【小题3】从第二段第一句“Conscientiousness is a key to success in any field.”可知认真尽责有很大的作用和意义。
【小题4】第二段表明工作的各个环节的顺利进行都离不开认真尽责的态度。
【小题5】原文可以找到“outstanding performance”。
【小题6】原文用“against the threat of job loss”
【小题7】第三段第一句中给出答案“---lead to problems”。
【小题8】第四段，原文用“giving them higher evaluations than objective measures---”.
【小题9】第五段最后一句用“which damaged their relationships”
【小题10】最后一段第一句用“it can discourage creativity”.