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The HEXACO model of personality structure is a
six-dimensional model of human personality that
was created by Ashton and Lee and explained in
their book, The H Factor of Personality,[1] based
on findings from a series of lexical studies
involving several European and Asian languages.
The six factors, or dimensions, include Honesty-
Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X),
Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and
Openness to Experience (O). Each factor is
composed of traits with characteristics indicating
high and low levels of the factor. The HEXACO
model was developed through similar methods as
other trait taxonomies and builds on the work of
Costa and McCrae[2] and Goldberg.[3]The model,
therefore, shares several common elements with
other trait models. However, the HEXACO model
is unique mainly due to the addition of the
Honesty-Humility dimension.[4]
Contents
 1The HEXACO model of personality
 2History and development
 3Relations with the "Big Five" personality factors
 4Research relating to the HEXACO model
o 4.1Theoretical basis of Agreeableness,
Honesty-Humility and Emotionality
o 4.2Honesty-Humility and the Dark Triad
o 4.3Further research
The HEXACO model of
personality
The HEXACO model of personality
conceptualizes human personality in terms of
six dimensions.
The HEXACO model was developed from several
previous independent lexical studies. Language
based taxonomies for personality traits have been
widely used as a method for developing
personality models. This method, based on the
logic of the lexical hypothesis, uses adjectives
found in language that describe behaviours and
tendencies among individuals. The identified
adjectives are distilled down through factor
analysis to yield a manageable number of groups
of related personality traits.
Research studies based on the lexical hypothesis
described above were first undertaken in the
English language. Subsequent research was
conducted in other languages, including Croatian,
Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek,
Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian, and
Turkish. Comparisons of the results revealed as
many as six emergent factors, in similar form
across different languages including English.[5]
Personality is often assessed using a self-report
inventory or observer report inventory. The six
factors are measured through a series of
questions designed to rate an individual on levels
of each factor.[6] Ashton and Lee have developed
self- and observer report forms of the HEXACO
Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-
R).[7] The HEXACO-PI-R assesses the six broad
HEXACO personality factors, each of which
contains four "facets", or narrower personality
characteristics. (An additional 25th narrow facet,
called Altruism, is also included and represents a
blend of the Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and
Agreeableness factors.)
The six factors, their facets, and the personality-
descriptive adjectives that typically belong to
these six groups are as follows:[8]
 Honesty-Humility (H):
o Facets: Sincerity, Fairness, Greed
Avoidance, Modesty
o Adjectives: Sincere, honest, faithful,
loyal, modest/unassuming versus sly,
deceitful, greedy, pretentious, hypocritical,
boastful, pompous
 Emotionality (E):
o Facets: Fearfulness, Anxiety,
Dependence, Sentimentality
o Adjectives: Emotional, oversensitive,
sentimental, fearful, anxious,
vulnerable versus brave, tough,
independent, self-assured, stable
 Extraversion (X):
o Facets: Social Self-Esteem, Social
Boldness, Sociability, Liveliness
o Adjectives: Outgoing, lively, extraverted,
sociable, talkative, cheerful,
active versus shy, passive, withdrawn,
introverted, quiet, reserved
 Agreeableness (A):
o Facets: Forgivingness, Gentleness,
Flexibility, Patience
o Adjectives: patient, tolerant, peaceful,
mild, agreeable, lenient, gentle versus ill-
tempered, quarrelsome, stubborn,
choleric
 Conscientiousness (C):
o Facets: Organization, Diligence,
Perfectionism, Prudence
o Adjectives: organized, disciplined,
diligent, careful, thorough,
precise versus sloppy, negligent,
reckless, lazy, irresponsible, absent-
minded
 Openness to Experience (O):
o Facets: Aesthetic Appreciation,
Inquisitiveness, Creativity,
Unconventionality
o Adjectives: intellectual, creative,
unconventional, innovative,
ironic versus shallow, unimaginative,
conventional
History and development
The HEXACO model was a development that
came about due to the desire of researchers
to assess personality. Though it was not a
direct result of this desire, due to this pursuit
and decades of effort later; the HEXACO
model would become established .
Due to the difficult task of assessing
personality, it was accepted that a systematic
method should be used, and the agreed upon
approach was to use factor analysis. This,
however, posed a new problem, as
determining which traits to use in a factor
analysis was a source of much debate. The
solution to this problem was based on
the lexical hypothesis. Simply put, this
hypothesis suggests that personality traits of
importance in a society will lead to the
development of words to describe both high
and low levels of these traits.
The first use of the lexical approach is
attributed to Baumgartner, a Swiss industrial
psychologist who used it to categorize words
in the German language. Though
Baumgartner was the first to use it, she was
shortly followed by Allport and Odbert in
1936, who used the approach on the English
language. It would be in their work, in which
they tediously pored through a dictionary, that
a list of roughly 18,000 words was created.
This was then condensed to just 4500 words
and used to described personality traits.
This list of words was reduced down to 35
terms by researcher Raymond Cattell on
which, after allowing other researches to rate,
he performed a factor analysis. The result of
the analysis produced 12 factors. Though
replications by other researchers failed to
produce this number, (most likely due to the
developing nature of the factor analysis
method). Though the 12 factors were not
replicated, there, however, were five traits
that were being consistently produced. These
5 traits would become the foundation of the
Big 5 model of personality assessment and
would be later supported by replication
studies that used more words than Cattell
had in his previous research.
As the Big 5 became more and more
accepted, it led to researchers wondering if
these traits would be consistently found in
other languages. After several studies,
throughout multiple languages; it was found
that the Big 5 was indeed consistently found
in other languages. Through the expansion of
research into other languages, it was found
that there was a sixth trait that kept
appearing. This trait was what would become
the honesty-humility trait.
The discovery of the honesty-humility trait in
other languages led researchers to wonder
why it wasn't found in the original English
language studies. This was answered when
modern computers were used to determine
that there was indeed an occurrence of this
sixth trait in the English language. By using
the complete set of words that had previously
been grouped into 75 different clusters, the
replications showed the existence of the sixth
trait that was previously missing. This
research across cultures, led to the trait,
Honesty-Humility, to be added to the Big 5
and becoming a new model; The HEXACO
model.[9]
Relations with the "Big Five"
personality factors
Currently, the most widely used model of
personality structure is also based on
analyses of personality-descriptive adjectives.
This model consists of the five personality
factors collectively known as the "Big
Five".[3] Three of the Big Five factors are
similar to
the Extraversion, Conscientiousness,
and Openness to Experience factors of the
HEXACO model. The two remaining Big Five
factors, called Agreeableness
and Neuroticism (with the opposite pole of the
latter factor being Emotional Stability), are
similar to the Agreeableness and Emotionality
factors of the HEXACO model – but with
some differences in the content of the factors.
Agreeableness and Emotionality from the
HEXACO model represent rotated variants of
their Big Five counterparts, for example,
characteristics related to a quick temper are
associated with Neuroticism or low Emotional
Stability in the Big Five framework, but with
low Agreeableness in the HEXACO
framework. Therefore, the Big Five's
Agreeableness and HEXACO's
Agreeableness are not identical. The Big Five
factors do not include an Honesty-Humility
factor, but some of the characteristics
belonging to Honesty-Humility are
incorporated into the Big Five's
Agreeableness factor. Although earlier
investigations found only the Big Five factors,
more recent studies conducted in various
languages (including English) with larger sets
of adjectives recovered six factors, as
summarized above.[5][10] The names of four of
the HEXACO factors (all except Honesty-
Humility and Emotionality) were adopted from
existing labels for the Big Five
factors. Factor names were selected on the
basis of the common meaning of the
characteristics within each factor. Still, other
studies that compare the two show that some
traits can be analyzed using the HEXACO
model instead of the Big Five. For the sake of
example, traits like narcissism or
manipulativeness can be evaluated with the
honesty-humility trait included in the model.[11]
Research relating to the
HEXACO model
Theoretical basis of Agreeableness,
Honesty-Humility and Emotionality
The HEXACO model is often used in research
studies when behaviours or traits found on the
Agreeableness, Honesty-Humility and
Emotionality dimensions are of specific
interest. The factors of Agreeableness,
Honesty-Humility and Emotionality are
distinctly different from their counterparts on
the Five Factor Model (FFM). Honesty-
Humility, Emotionality and Agreeableness are
proposed to be measures of Altruistic versus
Antagonistic behaviour. Honesty-Humility and
Agreeableness both measure two different
aspects of Reciprocal altruism, high levels of
which indicate a propensity for helping
behaviour and cooperation as opposed to the
exploitation of others. The Honesty-Humility
factor represents a person's tendency for pro-
social altruistic behaviours,[12] while
Agreeableness indicates an individual's
tendency to forgive and to show tolerance.
Emotionality is a measure of kin altruism, that
is, the tendency to show empathy and
attachment to one’s kin.
Honesty-Humility and the Dark
Triad
The Honest-Humility factor has been used in
a variety of studies as a measure of ethical or
pro-social behaviour (See Ashton and Lee
(2008)[13] for further details). Low levels of the
Honesty-Humility factor are associated with
greater levels of materialism, unethical
business practices and even deviant sexual
behaviour. The Honesty-Humility factor has
been found to predict endorsement of
unethical business practices [14] and even the
degree to which a person will take health and
safety risks (even towards fellow
employees).[15] An individual who scores low
on the Honesty-Humility factor may have a
proclivity for anti-social acts. Which anti-
social acts an individual is likely to commit
may be related to their personality profile
along the other factors of the HEXACO
model. For example, someone who scores
low on Honesty-Humility and low on
Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are
more likely to engage in delinquency in the
workplace.[13]
The dark triad of personality consists of
psychopathy, Machiavellianism and
narcissism. Psychopathy is identified by
characteristics such as manipulation, deceit,
and selfishness. Machiavellianism is
considered to be selfishness, in that one will
focus on their own needs, even when it
includes manipulating others. Narcissism can
also be defined as selfishness, but is different
as this person would consider themselves of
a higher importance than those around
them.[16] However, these constructs are said
to be not fully represented in common five-
factor models of personality. The Dark Triad
can be conceptualized as being on the
opposite pole of Honesty-Humility (Sincere,
Faithful, Loyal etc.), which would mean that
low levels of Honesty-Humility corresponds to
higher levels of psychopathy,
Machiavellianism and/or narcissism.[6][17] The
Dark Triad personality constructs tend to only
correlate with disagreeableness on the Big
Five Inventory, otherwise they are
represented inconsistently on measures of
the Big Five traits.[18] For that reason, several
researchers have used the HEXACO model
to gain a more detailed understanding of the
personality characteristics of individuals who
exhibit traits/behaviours that would be
considered along the Dark Triad dimension.[19]
Further research
Since the initial development of the HEXACO
Personality Inventory in the early 2000s, the
HEXACO model has been used to investigate
various topics in several fields of psychology.
The addition of the sixth factor, as well as the
rotation of Agreeableness and Emotionality,
allows for examination and prediction of
behaviour based on less prosocial behaviour.
Studies using the HEXACO model have
found support for the relationship between
Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility on pro-
social and ethical behaviour. One study
showed a significant relationship between
levels of Honesty-Humility and the
endorsement of revenge,[20] while another
found that levels of Agreeableness were
related to the tendency to forgive.[21] Levels of
Honesty-Humility have also been found to be
related to levels of creativity. Specifically, low
levels of Honesty-Humility were found to be
related to higher levels of self-reported
creativity; though, no relationship between
creativity and Agreeableness was
found.[22] Honesty-Humility has been used
with increasing frequency in studies of work-
place behaviour (See HEXACO website for
more details). For example, in one study,
researchers found that people high in
Honesty-Humility consistently engaged in
productive worker behaviours, whereas those
that were low in the H factor were more likely
to engage in counter-productive
behaviours.[23]
Further research using the HEXACO model
has examined the relationship between its
various domains and scores on risk taking
behaviour. In one study: levels of emotionality
were related to perceptions of risk; levels of
conscientiousness were related to perceived
benefits; while openness and honesty-
humility predicted social risk taking and
health/safety risk taking respectively.[24] The
HEXACO model has also been used in
studies of sexuality, including the association
of seductive behaviour and endorsement of
sexual activity without emotional attachment
to Emotionality and Honesty-Humility.[25] As
well, levels of Honesty-Humility were
associated with being faithful to one's partner
in a relationship.[26]
Other topics of study that utilized the
HEXACO model include:
religiosity,[27] prejudice,[28] ethical decision
making,[14] academic performance,[29][30] and
political attitudes/behaviors.[31][32][33]
Criticisms and limitations
The HEXACO model of personality is a trait-
based taxonomy of personality. As such, the
criticism and limitations of the model are
similar to that of other trait-based measures
(see Big Five personality traits § Critique).
Trait-based measures, including the
HEXACO model, typically rely on factor
analysis. Unfortunately, factor analysis does
not always ensure replicable results. Models
created through factor analysis can vary
between samples, depending on: (i) how the
researcher organizes the measures (e.g.,
using unipolar versus bipolar ratings), and (ii)
the amount of ratings/variables that are
included in the analysis.[34]
De Raad et al. have argued that only three
personality traits have fully replicated (i.e.,
appeared in all analyses) across cultures
(extraversion, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness). These authors argue that
beyond three traits, the factor markers
become unreliable. They further argue that
claims of universality for the HEXACO model
should be cautiously considered, since many
languages and cultures have yet to be
assessed with appropriate personality trait
studies.[35] Furthermore, the Honesty-Humility
dimension is not always consistently
replicated. Several past studies have
identified inconsistent sixth-factor dimensions
(e.g. hedonism–spontaneity)[36] while other
research has identified potentially more than
six factors.[12] It should be noted that the
above criticism is not unique to the HEXACO
model, given that there has been
considerable debate regarding the identity of
the fifth factor of personality in the Five-
Factor Model, especially across cultures.[37]
Many studies using the HEXACO model
support the usefulness of the dimensions of
Agreeableness, Emotionality and Honesty–
Humility. However, the HEXACO model may
not necessarily be a better personality tool in
every situation. When the HEXACO model
was compared to a modified five-factor model
that included a dimension of honesty–
humility, the predictive ability of the HEXACO
model was similar in several instances to that
of the modified FFM.[25] The authors further
acknowledge that the HEXACO model may
have an advantage when the predictor
variables are conceptually related to the
Honesty–Humility factor, and that in many
cases the modified FFM-plus-Honesty–
Humility model produced similar results.