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Progressiveness of farmers has become the key concern for overall development of farm business. Now a days farmers give relatively more importance to scientific farm information and knowledge over physical inputs/resources and innovation over land and capital possession. The present study was conducted with a sample size of seventy two progressive farmers in ten agro-climatic zones of Karnataka state aiming at tracing out the major factors governing farmers' progressiveness. Data were collected by personal interview using Q-sort methodology and analyzed using median analysis and principal component analysis. Six different factors could finally be extracted out of 17 relatively important variables governing progressiveness of farmers. These six factors were- scientific temperament, perseverance and hard work, cosmopoliteness, achievement motivation, entrepreneurial aptitude and work satisfaction. These factors can be used as input to predictive models or as benchmarks for developing scales or indices for measuring farmers' progressiveness. Moreover, the findings imply that these psycho-social factors contribute to a larger extent towards farmers' progressiveness, hence should invariably be addressed while planning developmental programmes for the farmers.