HEXACO Facets Research Articles

Neuroticism versus emotionality as mediators of the negative relationship between materialism and well-being

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between, neuroticism, emotionality well-being and materialism. A series of mediation analyses were conducted with data obtained from a set of questionnaires completed by University students. The results indicated that neuroticism and emotionality were mediators in the well-being-materialism relationship. However, this relationship is dependent upon whether neuroticism or emotionality is measured as the three neuroticism measures utilized were significant mediators whereas the HEXACO emotionality scale was not. A facet-level analysis was conducted with the IPIP-NEO facets of volatility and withdrawal and with the HEXACO facets of sentimentality/dependence and withdrawal. In either case, withdrawal was a significant mediator in the materialism well-being relationship, whereas volatility or sentimentality/dependence was not. The results highlight the differences between neuroticism and HEXACO emotionality and add additional insight into the relationship between materialism and lower well-being. These findings suggest possible methods of decreasing materialistic tendencies and increasing subjective well-being.

HEXACO Personality and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Domain- and Facet-Level Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT Several meta-analyses have demonstrated that personality is an important predictor of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). However, these meta-analyses have almost exclusively focused on Big Five personality domains, whereas recent evidence suggests that personality might be captured more accurately by the six HEXACO domains. Here, we provide a comprehensive meta-analysis of all HEXACO domain- and facet-level relations with OCB (k = 21). Extraversion (ρ = .347) exhibits the strongest relation with OCB, followed by Conscientiousness (ρ = .319), Agreeableness (ρ = .217), Honesty-Humility (ρ = .208), and Openness to Experience (ρ = .195). Emotionality does not correlate with OCB (ρ = −.002). The six HEXACO domains explain 13.7% of the variance in OCB, whereas the amount of explained variance increases by 3.4% when using the 24 HEXACO facets (R2 = .171). This discrepancy can be explained by masking effects among the facets of Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness, and by a cancellation effect among the facets of Emotionality. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as limitations and ideas for future research are discussed.

Psychopathy and assumptions about vulnerability to exploitation

Psychopathic appear to have an advantage in judging vulnerability in others using physical cues. In the current study, we investigated whether this extends to judgments of personality traits of people who are vulnerable to exploitation/manipulation. First, 173 women completed both the HEXACO personality inventory and the Life Events Checklist and were categorized as victims/non-victims. Women with a history of violent/sexual victimization rated themselves as lower on Agreeableness and higher on Openness to Experience and also tended to rate themselves as lower on Conscientiousness. In Phase 2, 510 men used HEXACO facets to rate two hypothetical individuals (difficult versus easy to manipulate/take advantage of). The “easy to manipulate” target was rated as higher on Emotionality and Agreeableness and lower on Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. In other words, there was a disconnect between victims' self-reported personality traits and those traits assumed to be related to vulnerability to exploitation. However, men with higher levels of psychopathy rated the “easy to manipulate” person as being more similar to actual victims' self-ratings than did those with lower psychopathic traits providing support for the idea that psychopathy may be related to a better understanding of the personalities of people who are vulnerable to exploitation.

Profiling Dark Princes? Validation of a New Measure of Trait Machiavellianism

Numerous scholars have criticized the traditional assessment of Machiavellianism due to insufficient construct coverage, some going so far as to question its distinctness from measures of psychopathy. Tackling these measurement issues, Collison, Vize, Miller, and Lynam (2018) developed the Five Factor Machiavellianism Inventory (FFMI), comprised of antagonism, agency, and planfulness. We aimed to demonstrate the validity of the FFMI by replicating its relations with the NEO-PI-R found by Collinson et al., provide further evidence for the validity of the FFMI by assessings its relations with the HEXACO facets, and link the FFMI to a broad range of work-related criteria. We found a very high (r_ICCS = .91) absolute profile similarity between the FFMI’s correlations with the NEO-PI-R in our sample (N = 572) and the correlation profile for the same variables reported by Collison et al. (2018). Both the NEO-PI-R and HEXACO-PI-R profiles for the FFMI found in the current study supported its distinctiveness from traditional measures of Machiavellianism, which converged greatly with the correlation profiles for the FFMI-antagonism dimension. In addition, the FFMI displayed positive relations with a broad range of criteria for vocational and work-related success and was clearly distinct from psychopathy. Implications and limitations are discussed.

HEXACO Personality and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Domain- and Facet-Level Meta-Analysis

Several meta-analyses have shown that personality is an important predictor of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). However, these meta-analyses have almost exclusively focused on Big Five personality domains, whereas recent evidence suggests that personality might be captured more accurately by the six HEXACO domains. Here, we provide a comprehensive meta-analysis of all HEXACO domain- and facet-level relations with OCB (k = 21). Extraversion (rho = .347) exhibits the strongest relation with OCB, followed by Conscientiousness (rho = .319), Agreeableness (rho = .217), Honesty-Humility (rho = .208), and Openness to Experience (rho = .195). Emotionality does not correlate with OCB (rho = -.002). The six HEXACO domains explain 8.8% of the variance in OCB, whereas the amount of explained variance increases by 3.4% when using the 24 HEXACO facets (R2 = .122). This discrepancy can be explained by masking effects among the facets of Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness, and by a cancellation effect among the facets of Emotionality. Theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations and ideas for future research are discussed.

Five Factor Machiavellianism: Validation of a New Measure

Numerous scholars have criticized the traditional assessment of Machiavellianism due to insufficient construct coverage, some going so far as to question its distinctness from psychopathy. Tackling these issues, Collison, Vize, Miller, and Lynam developed the Five Factor Machiavellianism Inventory (FFMI), comprising antagonism, agency, and planfulness. We aimed to replicate the MACH-IV psychopathy relations, demonstrate the validity of the FFMI by assessing its relations with the NEO-PI-R and the HEXACO facets, and link the FFMI to a broad range of work-related criteria. We replicated the MACH-IV psychopathy relations and found a very high ( = .91) absolute profile similarity between the FFMI’s correlations with the NEO-PI-R in our sample (N = 572) and the correlation profile for the same variables reported by Collison and colleagues. Both the NEO-PI-R and HEXACO-PI-R profiles for the FFMI found in the current study supported its distinctiveness from traditional measures of Machiavellianism, which converged greatly with the correlation profiles for the FFMI-antagonism dimension. A cluster analysis also showed a substantial proportion of Five Factor Machiavellian individuals. In addition, the FFMI displayed positive relations with a broad range of criteria for vocational and work-related success and was clearly distinct from psychopathy.

Getting along And/Or Getting Ahead: Differential Hexaco Personality Correlates of Likeability and Popularity among Adolescents

Getting along (i.e. to be liked) and getting ahead (i.e. to be popular) are two fundamental psychological motives that have important consequences for adolescents’ well–being. Especially antisocial behavioural tendencies, which are less well covered by the Big Five than by the HEXACO model, have been shown to differentially predict likeability and popularity. In this study, possible differential relations between personality and likeability and popularity were investigated using the HEXACO Simplified Personality Inventory and sociometric measures of likeability and popularity among 552 (12 to 14 years old) adolescents. Results showed that agreeableness was the most important likeability predictor, whereas extraversion (positive), openness to experience, honesty–humility, and agreeableness (all three negative) were the most important popularity predictors. Facet–level analyses revealed that selected HEXACO facets (greed avoidance, fearfulness, social boldness, gentleness, prudence, perfectionism, aesthetic appreciation, and altruism) most strongly—and in opposite directions—differentiated in the prediction of likeability and popularity. Furthermore, none of the expected interactions but several masking and cancellation effects were observed. The results, which are also discussed in light of interpersonal circumplex, resource control strategies, hierarchical differentiation, and socioanalytic frameworks, suggest that—among early adolescents—differential personality predictors may make it difficult to both get along and get ahead. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology

Investigating Relative and Absolute Methods of Measuring HEXACO Personality Using Self- and Observer Reports

Abstract. Based on the principles of social comparison theory, the relative percentile (RP) method is an alternative approach to the measurement of psychological characteristics. It involves asking raters to explicitly estimate the percentage of a comparison group that they believe is lower than the target on a characteristic. This study explored the RP method for the measurement of personality. Specifically, we investigated the convergence of the RP with traditional (i.e., Likert-type) personality measures and the convergence between self- and observer reports. Both members of 142 Australian well-acquainted dyads rated themselves and their counterpart using the traditional Likert-type HEXACO-100 and a 25-item RP assessment of the HEXACO facets. Two weeks later, 78 participants completed the RP assessment again, allowing the assessment of test-retest reliability. The RP ratings showed mostly moderate reliability, though generally lower reliability than their corresponding traditional scales, and a relatively clear HEXACO factor structure. Furthermore, the RP ratings correlated significantly with the Likert-type ratings from the same rater (e.g., self–self) and with RP ratings from a different rater (i.e., self–observer), although convergence did vary by HEXACO domain. One potential issue with RP ratings, however, is that they mostly yielded Gaussian distributions, instead of the theoretically expected uniform distribution, which may suggest that it is challenging for respondents to estimate percentiles.

Relations Between Lexical and Biological Perspectives on Personality: New Evidence Based on HEXACO and Affective Neuroscience Theory

We provide evidence on the convergence of language-based questionnaire and biological perspectives on personality traits. The first study, conducted on Serbian students, provided evidence on the position of Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) in the personality space defined by HEXACO facets. The second, replicatory study was conducted on a sample of German young adults. Results show that the instruments based on these 2 approaches target highly similar personality phenomena, which is revealed in the high canonical correlations between them (the first 3 being above .70 in both samples). Despite the overlap, the scales measuring emotional systems do not map onto HEXACO factors one-to-one, and mostly have substantial loading on more than 1 HEXACO factor. The pattern of correlations between HEXACO and ANPS scales was highly similar in the 2 samples. The importance of the findings for the personality taxonomy and theory is discussed.

Using the Big Five Aspect Scales to translate between the HEXACO and Big Five personality models.

The extensive use of two diverging personality taxonomies (the Big Five and HEXACO models) in contemporary research creates a need for understanding how traits connect to each other across taxonomies. Previous research has approached this at both a highly general (domain-) level as well as at a highly specific (facet-) level. The present report is the first to use the intermediate (aspect-) level of the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) to understand the connections between the two models. We explored these associations in a meta-analysis of four samples drawn from three countries (total N=1,586). We observed that each HEXACO domain correlated≥|0.51| with one or more BFAS aspects. Half of the aspects were more strongly associated with HEXACO facets than with HEXACO domains, sometimes markedly so. Although many domains, aspects, and facets are similarly represented across the two models, this was not always the case. Researchers seeking to use one model to extend findings built primarily off the other should carefully consider how well represented their traits of interest are in the other assessment. Psychology instructors are encouraged to use the BFAS to illustrate the subtler distinctions between the Big Five and HEXACO models.

Aggressiveness in the HEXACO personality model

The a im of this research was to examine the relations between the HEXACO facets and aggressiveness components (anger, vengefulness, domination, hostility, reactive aggression, proactive aggression, and indirect aggression). On a sample of 654 participants from general population, HEXACO?60, Aggressiveness Questionnaire AVDH, Reactive?Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ), and Indirect Aggression Scale (IAS) were applied. The results of the community structure network analysis provided the most informative insight into these relations and showed that all aggressiveness components formed a single community with the Agreeableness facets. Thereby, facet Patience was the strongest correlate of anger, and hostility had the highest clustering coefficient, which brings together the Agreeableness facets and aggressiveness components. Although Honesty?Humility formed a separate community, some of its facets had strong isolated connections with indirect aggression and dominance. The results revealed that Agreeableness is a dominant correlate of aggressiveness and captures all aggressiveness components, while Honesty? Humility is related to specific components, referring to a manifestation of aggressiveness in a more subtle and indirect way.

HEXACO personality and Schwartz's personal values: A facet-level analysis

This study systematically examined the correlates of Schwartz’s basic values with the broad and narrow traits of the HEXACO model of personality. A sample of 1244 adults (53% male; M age=44, SD=12) completed the 200-item HEXACO-PI-R and the Portrait Values Questionnaire measuring Schwartz’s 10 basic personal values. Regression models predicting each of the ten basic values from personality revealed mean-adjusted multiple correlations of .39 for HEXACO factors without honesty-humility, .45 for all HEXACO factors, and .53 for HEXACO facets. The facet-level multiple correlations were particularly large (>.60) for power, universalism, and cooperation. Results suggest that individual differences in personality and values overlap to a greater extent than implied by past literature.

What Is Engagement? Proactivity as the Missing Link in the HEXACO Model of Personality.

We tested the hypothesis that proactivity represents the engagement vector in the HEXACO model of personality. Questionnaire data were obtained in five studies, three of which consisted (mostly) of students: Study 1 (N = 188, Mage = 20.0, 89.4% women), Study 3 (N = 315, Mage = 20.4, 80.6% women), and Study 4 (N = 309 self-ratings, Mage = 20.0, 78.3% women; N = 307 other-ratings, Mage = 24.5, 62.2% women). Participants in the other two studies came from an ISO-certified representative community panel: Study 2 (N = 525, Mage = 51.2, 52.0% women) and Study 5 (N = 736, Mage = 42.2, 48.0% women). Proactive Personality and Proactivity were positively related to Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, but only weakly related or unrelated to Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness, supporting the alignment of Proactive Personality/Proactivity with the hypothesized HEXACO engagement vector. Additionally, Proactivity explained incremental variance in self-rated job performance on top of the HEXACO facets that were most closely associated with Proactive Personality/Proactivity, that is, Social Boldness (an Extraversion facet), Diligence (a Conscientiousness facet), and Creativity (an Openness to Experience facet), but not in entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. Proactivity is the missing engagement link in the HEXACO model of personality. The results are discussed in light of higher-order factors (e.g., general factor of personality and Alpha and Beta) of personality and bandwidth-fidelity controversies.

The 24-item Brief HEXACO Inventory (BHI)

Up until now, no really short instrument that measures the six personality dimensions of the HEXACO model has been available. In two studies, I report the construction of the Brief HEXACO Inventory (BHI), which represents the 24 HEXACO facets with 1 item per facet (i.e., 4 items per domain) and which takes approximately 2–3min to complete. Although characterized by relatively low alpha reliability, its test–retest stability, self-other agreement, and convergent correlations with full-length scales are relatively high and its validity loss is only modest. Correcting for attenuation using a weighted average of alpha reliability, test–retest stability, and self-other agreement, the BHI re-estimates the original construct validity correlations of the HEXACO-PI-R with relatively great accuracy.

At the interface of social cognition and psychometrics: Manipulating the sex of the reference class modulates sex differences in personality traits

Psychometric surveys suggest that sex differences in personality are minimal. Herein, we argue that (a) the mind is likely biased toward assessing oneself relative to same-sex others, and (b) this bias may affect the measurement of sex differences in personality. In support of this, an experiment demonstrates modulation of sex differences on the HEXACO facets by manipulating the sex of the “reference class”—the group of people subjects compare themselves to when making self-assessments on survey items. Although patterns varied across traits, sex differences were relatively small in the “unspecified” and “same-sex” reference class conditions—but substantially larger in the “opposite-sex” condition. These findings point to a same-sex comparison bias that may impact the measurement of sex differences in personality.

The effect of prenatal androgen exposure on the development of neural reactivity systems: A study of the HEXACO Personality Inventory

The ratio of the lengths of the second and fourth digits of hands (2D:4D) seems to vary as a function of systematic differences in prenatal androgen exposure (Hönekopp & Watson, 2010). The 2D:4D ratio has been shown to be related to a variety of personality attributes. This study predicted that 2D:4D would covary with scores on the emotionality dimension of the six-facet HEXACO personality assessment, due to emotionality’s relationship with neural reactivity systems controlled by the amygdala (Hines, Allen, & Gorski, 1992), but that 2D:4D would relate to no other facet. Consistent with hypotheses, data showed that men had smaller ratios than women on both the right, t(405)=2.84, p<.05, d=.28, and left hands, t(405)=4.51, p<.05, d=.45, and the relationship between 2D:4D and emotionality was outside of sampling error of zero, r=.18, p<.001. Additionally, 2D:4D was unrelated to the remaining HEXACO facets. Findings suggest that prenatal testosterone exposure has an organizing effect on personality traits.