Life history strategy and the HEXACO model of personality: A facet level examination

Abstract

The HEXACO model and life history theory have been used to examine the adaptive trade-offs of personality traits that combine to guide life history strategies (LHSs). A “fast” LHS embodies a preference for early mating along with limited parental investment, whereas a “slow” strategy denotes the opposite pattern. Clarity is currently needed regarding how the HEXACO dimensions, as well as their lower-order facets, differentially relate to varying LHSs at the multivariate level and how sex may influence these relations. A sample of 366 undergraduate students completed self-report measures of LHS and the HEXACO personality traits. Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, Emotionality, and Conscientiousness were positive multivariate predictors of a slower strategy when assessed with a socially-oriented measure of LHS (the Mini-K). Sex moderated the relations between Extraversion and Consciousness in predicting LHS. Significant variability existed among many of the facets for the HEXACO dimensions and LHS. These findings point to the differential relations between the HEXACO dimensions and their respective facets with LHS, which may be obscured when solely examining personality at the dimensional level.