Models of Personality as Organizing Structures for Behavior

The Five Factor Model (aka The Big Five) has been the dominant model for studying personality and its behavioral correlates for approximately two decades. This model states that the whole of human personality is comprised of five major domains and all individuals exhibit different profiles based on their differing levels of each domain. Much of the work that led to the widespread acceptance of this model was conducted in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Peabody & Goldberg, 1989; Goldberg, 1990) and showed that statistical analyses of words used in English to describe individuals consistently resulted in the emergence of the same five personality factors across varieties of samples, including children, college students, military personnel, and working adults. The descriptive words found in each factor reflect the content of each broad personality domain, defined in Table 4 (see Barrick & Mount, 1991, or Costa & McCrae, 1992, for similar definitions).

Table 4. Five-Factor Model Definitions

Domain	Definition	Common components
Extraversion	The extent to which an individual is interested in being around people and engaged in the environment, as opposed to preferring being by oneself and focusing on one’s inner life	Sociability, dominance, ambition, positive emotionality
Agreeableness	The degree to which a person tends to be kind, considerate, and cooperative, and to focus on interpersonal relationships and social harmony	Cooperation, trust, compassion, altruism
Conscientiousness	The extent to which an individual is careful, disciplined, and achievement oriented	Dependability, order, cautiousness, persistence
Emotional Stability	The tendency to respond to stress calmly and manage emotions effectively	Lack of anxiety, personal insecurity, vulnerability to stress
Openness to Experience	Preferences for new experiences and complexity in an individual’s mental and experiential life	Creativity, curiosity, broad-mindedness

The HEXACO model is an alternative six-factor model that attempts to address some of the perceived weaknesses of the Big Five model. The HEXACO model addresses concerns about the applicability of the Big Five across cultures, where the research shows that a sixth factor emerges (e.g., Ashton & Lee, 2007; Ashton et al., 2004). Moreover, it suggests that the traditional Big Five model can be subsumed within this alternative model with only minor adjustments to some of the factors.

The acronym HEXACO is derived from the six broad domains contained in the model: Honesty-Humility (H), Emotional Regulation (E), Extraversion (eX), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness (O) (Ashton et al., 2004). The most important addition of this model is the Honesty-Humility domain, which captures individual differences in adherence to principles of honesty, fairness, and ethical behavior. Common components include sincerity, fairness, and modesty (Lee & Ashton, 2004). Honesty-Humility has shown value in predicting outcomes of interest in both education and work settings, including grade point average and counterproductive academic behavior (de Vries, de Vries, & Born, 2011), job performance (Johnson, Rowatt, & Petrini, 2011), and self-reported workplace integrity and delinquency (Lee, Ashton, & de Vries, 2005; Lee et al., 2009). In sum, based on its relevance across cultures and languages and the addition of the Honesty-Humility factor, the HEXACO model can be seen as a cutting-edge replacement for the Big Five as a highest-order organizing model for human personality.1

Table 5. Example Behavioral Items Used to Measure the HEXACO Personality Domains

HEXACO domain	Behavioral item example
Honesty-Humility	I would never take things that aren’t mine. I don’t pretend to be more than I am. I cheat to get ahead.*
Emotional Regulation	I don’t worry about things that have already happened. I get stressed out easily. I remain calm under pressure.
Extraversion	I talk to a lot of different people at parties. I take charge. I smile a lot.
Agreeableness	I am usually a patient person. I rarely complain. I am nice to people I should be angry at.
Conscientiousness	I get started quickly on doing a job. I work hard. I make plans and stick to them.
Openness	I come up with something new. I see beauty in things that others might not notice. I avoid philosophical discussions.*

Items are from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999).

Item is reversed such that it represents the low end of the domain.

To illustrate behavioral content typically included in HEXACO measures, item examples are featured in Table 5.

1
Because of the obvious similarities between the HEXACO and Big Five models, the extensive research results showing the value of the Big Five also apply to the HEXACO.