Objections to the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure—and why those Objections Fail

On the Comparability of Basic Personality Models: Meta-Analytic Correspondence, Scope, and Orthogonality of the Big Five and HEXACO Dimensions

Models of basic personality structure are among the most widely used frameworks in psychology and beyond, and they have considerably advanced the understanding of individual differences in a plethora of consequential outcomes. Over the past decades, two such models have become most widely used: the Five Factor Model (FFM) or Big Five, respectively, and the HEXACO Model of Personality. However, there is no large-scale empirical evidence on the general comparability of these models. Here, we provide the first comprehensive meta-analysis on (a) the correspondence of the FFM/Big Five and HEXACO dimensions, (b) the scope of trait content the models cover, and (c) the orthogonality (i.e., degree of independence) of dimensions within the models. Results based on 152 (published and unpublished) samples and 6,828 unique effects showed that the HEXACO dimensions incorporate notable conceptual differences compared to the FFM/Big Five dimensions, resulting in a broader coverage of the personality space and less redundancy between dimensions. Moreover, moderator analyses revealed substantial differences between operationalizations of the FFM/Big Five. Taken together, these findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of basic personality dimensions and their assessment.

Relations between HEXACO personality and ideology variables are mostly genetic in nature

Existing work indicates that socio-political attitudes (or: ideology) are associated with personality, with Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism relating most strongly to honesty-humility and openness to experience, the two value-related domains of the HEXACO framework. Using a sample of 7067 twins and siblings of twins (including 1376 complete twin pairs), we examined the degree to which these relations arise from common genetic and environmental sources. Heritability estimates for the HEXACO personality and ideology variables ranged from .34 to .58. Environmental factors shared by twins reared together showed negligible effects on individual differences in personality and ideology. At the phenotypic level, Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism dimensions related most strongly to honesty-humility and openness to experience. These associations were mostly explained by genetic factors (48%–93%). Genetic correlations between openness to experience and the ideology scales ranged from –.29 to –.53; those between honesty-humility and the ideology scales ranged from –.31 to –.43. None of the environmental correlations exceeded | r| = .18. These results suggest that the relations between the two value-related domains of the HEXACO personality model and ideology are mostly genetic in nature, and that there is substantial overlap in the heritable components of personality and ideology.

Concept of indecisiveness within the HEXACO personality framework

BACKGROUND

Decision making is one of the basic human activities. Indecisiveness, i.e. the stable tendency towards not making decisions in a timely manner, may influence the quality and speed in decision making and have long-term consequences for our professional and personal life. The goal of this research was to examine the position of indecisiveness within the HEXACO model of personality, at both the broad domains and narrow facets level. A secondary goal was to translate the Frost & Shows Indecisiveness Scale (IS) into the Croatian language and examine its validity and reliability.

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

An internet-based sample size of 296 participants filled in both short and long version of Indecisiveness Scale and the HEXACO-PI-R.

RESULTS

The results show that the IS retains the original one-factor structure as proposed by the original authors and has a high reliability. The shortened version shows properties very similar to the longer version and is deemed an appropriate replacement. Extraversion showed the highest positive correlation with indecisiveness, followed by negative correlations with conscientiousness, emotionality and agreeableness.

CONCLUSIONS

The Croatian translation of the IS is a valid and reliable measure. The results also confirm that the shortened 11-item version can be used as a replacement for the full 15-item version. Since there was no measure of indecisiveness in Croatian before, this instrument could be used in the future by researchers interested in this construct. It was shown that extraversion has the strongest relationship with indecisiveness, followed by conscientiousness, emotionality and agreeableness.

Age and gender differences in socially aversive (“dark”) personality traits

The strong overlap of personality traits discussed under the label of “dark personality” (e.g., psychopathy, spitefulness, moral disengagement) endorses a common framework for socially aversive traits over and beyond the dark triad. Despite the rapidly growing research on socially aversive traits, there is a lack of studies addressing age-associated differences in these traits. In the present study ( N = 12,501), we investigated the structure of the D Factor of Personality across age and gender using local structural equation modeling, thereby expressing the model parameters as a quasi-continuous, nonparametric function of age. Specifically, we evaluated loadings, reliabilities, factor (co-)variances, and means across 35 locally weighted age groups (from 20 to 54 years), separately for females and males. Results indicated that measurement models were highly stable, thereby supporting the conceptualization of the D factor independent of age and gender. Men exhibited uniformly higher latent means than females and all latent means decreased with increasing age. Overall, D and its themes were invariant across age and gender. Therefore, future studies can meaningfully pursue causes of mean differences across age and between genders.

Livesley's lament on classifying personality pathology: A commentary

This commentary on Livesley's paper in this special issue on International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11's personality disorder (PD) section addresses each of four issues that Livesley claims are impeding progress towards an evidence-based system for the classification of personality pathology. I focus my commentary on the third issue, but also comment briefly on the others. Regarding, first, the complexity of personality pathology and, second, problematic assumptions about the nature of personality pathology, I contend that Livesley's comments are accurate, but omit that the fundamental impediment is the refusal of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) establishment to allow the official classification to reflect the reality of personality pathology that he describes, in contrast to its acceptance in the ICD-11. In response to Livesley's third claim that a viable alternative to categorical diagnosis is not available, I take issue with various aspects of his assertions and develop arguments that the ICD-11 PD model provides a useful, although admittedly imperfect, system. Finally, I agree with Livesley that the revision processes for official classifications are conservative and open to non-scientific influences, but maintain that whereas the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders establishment held fast to the status quo, the ICD-11 PD Working Group made considerable progress towards a valid PD diagnostic system. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The influence of demographics and personality on COVID-19 coping in young adults

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented effect on human behavior and well-being. Demographic factors and personality traits have been shown to independently influence whether individuals adopt adaptive or maladaptive coping responses. However, to date, researchers have not considered how demographics and personality could interact to influence COVID-19 coping responses. In a sample of 516 North American young adults, we found direct links from two demographic factors (i.e., income and having children) and from multiple personality traits (as captured by the HEXACO model) to adaptive and maladaptive COVID-19 coping responses. We also found that personality indirectly linked a broader range of demographic factors (income, age, gender, having children) with COVID-19 coping responses. We encourage future research on COVID-19 coping responses to consider not just the individual contributions of demographics and personality, but their interdependent influence on whether individuals adopt more or less adaptive COVID-19 pandemic coping responses.

Bottom Up Construction of a Personality Taxonomy

Abstract. In pursuit of a more systematic and comprehensive framework for personality assessment, we introduce procedures for assessing personality traits at the lowest level: nuances. We argue that constructing a personality taxonomy from the bottom up addresses some of the limitations of extant top-down assessment frameworks (e.g., the Big Five), including the opportunity to resolve confusion about the breadth and scope of traits at different levels of the organization, evaluate unique and reliable trait variance at the item level, and clarify jingle/jangle issues in personality assessment. With a focus on applications in survey methodology and transparent documentation, our procedures contain six steps: (1) identification of a highly inclusive pool of candidate items, (2) programmatic evaluation and documentation of item characteristics, (3) test-retest analyses of items with adequate qualitative and quantitative properties, (4) analysis of cross-ratings from multiple raters for items with adequate retest reliability, (5) aggregation of ratings across diverse samples to evaluate generalizability across populations, (6) evaluations of predictive utility in various contexts. We hope these recommendations are the first step in a collaborative effort to identify a comprehensive pool of personality nuances at the lowest level, enabling subsequent construction of a robust hierarchy – from the bottom up.

Big Five facets' associations with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors

Climate change mandates us to understand why individuals do (not) behave pro-environmentally and personality traits are well suited for this purpose. Past research has mostly focused on how broad domain-level personality traits were associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. In two datasets (N = 501 and 287), we examined whether personality facets provided a more detailed picture of how personality traits were associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. It was found that some facets were the main drivers of domain-level associations. Furthermore, it was found that facets, collectively, predicted pro-environmental attitudes (r = .50 to .52) and behaviors (r = .29 to .42) in holdout datasets. This predictive ability was on par with the predictive ability of domains. Therefore, facets provided a greater understanding of how personality traits were associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, facets provided a similar predictive ability of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors to that of domains.