Do as you’re told! Facets of agreeableness and early adult outcomes for inner-city boys

•We examined Big Five agreeableness facets predicting life outcomes a decade later.•Compliance predicted education, employment, and less teenage fatherhood and crime.•Compassion predicted longer committed relationships.•Beyond the Big Five factor level, personality facets yield important insights.

With data from the middle cohort of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a prospective longitudinal study of inner-city boys, we examined whether Big Five agreeableness facets could be reliably recovered in this sample, and whether facets predicted educational, occupational, social, and antisocial life outcomes assessed a decade later. Caregivers described their adolescent boys’ personalities using the Common California Q-Set; twelve years later, participants were interviewed and court records were obtained. Factor analyses recovered two facets: compliance and compassion. Compliance predicted more schooling and lower risk of unemployment, teenage fatherhood, and crime; compassion related to longer committed relationships. Findings highlight the value of studying personality at the facet level.