Marry Someone With This Trait If You Want To Get Ahead In Your Career

Career growth isn't usually something we consider when choosing a life partner. But as it turns out, your spouse can have a profound effect on your success.

For best results: Choose someone who's conscientious.

A study published in Psychological Science of more than 4,500 married Australian couples looked at how extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness affect individual success, finding a positive correlation between conscientiousness and higher salaries.

When researchers then examined how these traits affected an individual's spouse, only conscientiousness made a difference either way.

Joshua Jackson, one of the the authors of the study and an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, says that this is because certain behaviors, such as organizational skills or attentiveness, tend to translate to a person's spouse, reports the Washington Post.

Unlike inward qualities such as neuroticism, conscientiousness affects those around you, inspiring successful behaviors to rub off onto a husband or wife.

Jackson also sites a second reason why this trait makes a difference: conscientious spouses - both male and female - are usually organized and hard working, and naturally take over majority of the household chores. This then frees up their partner to spend more time focused on their career. "You're not as stressed about certain chores or duties that need to be done while you're at work," he explained to the Washington Post.