The HEXACO model, explained

What is the HEXACO model?

HEXACO is a model of personality structure developed by Michael Ashton and Kibeom Lee. The name is an acronym for its six broad factors. It is best understood as a close relative of the Big Five rather than a rival tradition: four of the six factors are recognisably the familiar ones, and the differences are concentrated in the other two.

• H, Honesty-Humility. Sincerity, fairness, modesty and a low interest in greed or status. Low scorers are more willing to flatter, cut corners and take what they have not earned.
• E, Emotionality. Fearfulness, anxiety, sentimentality and a wish for emotional support. It is the closest thing in the model to Neuroticism, but not identical to it.
• X, eXtraversion. Social self-esteem, boldness, sociability and liveliness.
• A, Agreeableness. Forgiveness, gentleness, flexibility and patience under provocation.
• C, Conscientiousness. Organisation, diligence, perfectionism and prudence.
• O, Openness to Experience. Aesthetic appreciation, curiosity, creativity and unconventionality.

As in the Big Five, which emerged from decades of lexical research rather than from any single study (Goldberg, 1993), each factor is a continuous dimension. Everyone has a position on all six, most people sit somewhere near the middle of most of them, and the model describes differences of degree rather than kinds of people.

What is the evidence for six factors rather than five?

The Big Five came out of the lexical approach: collect the trait adjectives a language contains, ask many people to rate themselves or others on them, and see which words travel together. When that work was repeated outside English, a six-factor solution kept appearing. A reanalysis of psycholexical studies in seven languages, including Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean and Polish, found that the six-factor solutions in each language recovered substantially the same six factors (Ashton et al., 2004).

The sixth factor is the one the Big Five does not have a home for. Words like sincere, fair, greedy, pretentious and sly form a cluster of their own. In five-factor solutions that content is spread thinly across Agreeableness and, to a lesser extent, Conscientiousness, which is why a five-factor measure can miss a person whose distinguishing feature is how they treat other people's money, credit or trust.

This is an argument about how many broad clusters the evidence supports, not an argument that the Big Five is wrong. The five-factor structure replicates well, and the sixth factor does not disturb it so much as split one part of it off and give it its own axis.

How is HEXACO measured?

The HEXACO Personality Inventory is a self-report questionnaire in which each of the six factors is measured by several narrower facet scales, so a score is built from a set of related questions rather than a single item. The original validation work, in a sample of over 400 respondents, reported high internal consistency for all the scales, a factor structure that matched the hypothesised six factors, and adequate convergent validity against external variables (Lee & Ashton, 2004). The inventory has since been revised and published in long and short forms, and there is an observer-report version worded for a friend, partner or colleague.

The inventory also includes an Altruism scale that sits between Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness and Emotionality rather than under any single factor, which is a reminder that the six factors are a summary of a space, not a set of watertight boxes.

How does HEXACO map onto the Big Five?

If you already know your Big Five scores, most of HEXACO translates directly. Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience mean much what they mean in a Big Five inventory. The interesting translations are in the other three.

How do HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality differ from the Big Five versions?

The clearest way to see it is to follow anger. In most Big Five measures, a quick temper counts as Neuroticism, alongside worry and low mood. In HEXACO, anger and irritability sit at the low end of Agreeableness, while Emotionality keeps fearfulness, anxiety, sentimentality and the need for emotional support (Ashton et al., 2014).

The same rotation moves sincerity and modesty out of Agreeableness and into Honesty-Humility, leaving HEXACO Agreeableness as something closer to tolerance: how readily you forgive, how gently you deal with people, how much provocation you absorb before you push back. The practical consequence is that HEXACO separates two things a Big Five Agreeableness score blends: being pleasant to deal with, and being honest to deal with. Those two are only moderately related, and they predict different behaviours.

This is a rotation of the same space rather than a claim that one set of scores is right and the other wrong. A Big Five measure and a HEXACO measure of the same person will agree closely on Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness, and will carve the remaining ground differently.

What does Honesty-Humility predict?

The case for the sixth factor rests on it covering ground the other five leave scattered. A review of the research on Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness and Emotionality sets out where the factor came from in lexical studies, how it is operationalised in the HEXACO-PI-R, why it is theoretically distinct from HEXACO Agreeableness, and how much of its variance Five-Factor Model instruments capture, which is only part of it (Ashton et al., 2014). A five-factor profile can therefore be silent about the thing the sixth factor measures: how a person behaves when there is an advantage to be taken.

That is the measurement part of the case for six factors. The theoretical part is that the factors have a plausible reading in terms of the costs and benefits of cooperating (Ashton & Lee, 2007). Honesty-Humility is a willingness not to exploit others, Agreeableness a willingness not to retaliate, and Emotionality caution about physical and social risk. A model whose dimensions have a rationale is easier to build on than one that is only a summary of correlations.

Two honest limits. Honesty-Humility is a self-report, and self-reports of one's own fairness are exactly the place where people might present themselves well, which is why the construct validity of those scales is one of the things that review examines. And a low score describes a tendency, not a verdict on a person.

How does Wellington use HEXACO?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot asks 60 questions and scores 6 broad dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience and Honesty-Humility. That is the Big Five with the sixth HEXACO factor added, a structure its authors argue is a viable alternative to five factors and consistent with the six-factor lexical results (Ashton & Lee, 2007). Wellington keeps Emotional Stability in its Big Five form rather than adopting HEXACO Emotionality, so that a higher score always means more of the quality named, and takes Honesty-Humility from the HEXACO tradition because nothing in the five covers it.

The first ten questions are answered before anything is asked of you; after question ten you sign in with an email address so your answers are saved and your results can be shown. There is no card. Each dimension is a continuous score, reported as a percentile against the reference sample, in one of three bands: Quiet below the 30th percentile, Balanced to the 70th, High above it. The bands and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. In the written report, every dimension has three pages, one per band, and your answers choose which one you read. Those norms are provisional while the norming sample is completed. The Wellington Membership adds the facets beneath each dimension and all 24 VIA character strengths, 90 traits in all, and continues toward 255 traits across eight domains over 104 short weekly modules. Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional. It is not designed for hiring, and you can export or delete your data at any time.

Questions people ask

Is HEXACO better than the Big Five?

It is the same space, cut a little differently, with one extra axis. Lexical studies in seven languages support six factors, and Five-Factor Model instruments capture only part of the Honesty-Humility variance. For most everyday purposes the two agree; where they differ, the sixth factor adds information rather than replacing anything.

What does HEXACO stand for?

Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. The letters name the six broad factors of the model, and the acronym is deliberate rather than accidental. Four of the six are recognisably the Big Five dimensions of the same name. The two that differ are Emotionality, which keeps fearfulness and sentimentality but moves anger out, and Honesty-Humility, for which the five-factor model has no separate place.

Where can I take a HEXACO test?

The HEXACO Personality Inventory is available from its authors for research and personal use, and several sites host versions of it. Wellington's free Snapshot measures the Big Five plus Honesty-Humility, which covers the sixth factor without adopting the HEXACO rotation of Agreeableness and Emotionality.

Is Emotionality the same as Neuroticism?

Close, but not identical. Both include fearfulness and anxiety. HEXACO Emotionality adds sentimentality and the wish for emotional support, and moves anger and irritability out to the low end of Agreeableness, where most Big Five measures count them as Neuroticism.