COLUMNS

Introducing the HEXACO Model of Personality and its Impact on the World of Work

Author : Sylvia Luu, MA
Posted : December 16, 2016
Posted In : COLUMNS
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  • Personality is often conceptualized as a relatively stable set of traits that describes an individuals’ temperaments and interpersonal characteristics, over time and across situations. Personality includes elements within people that determine their behavior (i.e., affect and cognition) and the observable behaviors they demonstrate. These aspects are important to assess in organizational settings because they offer insight into how individuals will behave at work and have been shown to be predictive of job performance.

     

    The ‘Somewhat Dated’ Five Factor Model

    At the turn of the century, the most prevalent model of personality was the Five Factor Model (FFM) of Personality. The FFM consists of 5-dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism/emotional stability. Several meta-analyses have been conducted to examine the predictive ability of the FFM for important work outcomes such as job performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. There is little doubt that the FFM substantially increased our understanding of personality in the world of work and, for a long time, has been considered by most as the gold standard for personality.

    However, the FFM is significantly limited in its ability to generalize across languages and cultures. In fact, the FFM does not generalize beyond English speaking cultures. Researchers have argued that since the FFM was derived using a lexical approach focusing only on the English language and thereby is only applicable to English speaking cultures – predominantly the United States. The lexical hypothesis proposes that all aspects of personality are captured in the language used to discuss/describe them. Therefore, if only English is used, there may be unique individual differences in other cultures that are not accounted for. Given that most personality measures are based on the FFM, this poses a significant issue for organizations as the business world is becoming increasingly global.

    Say Hello to the HEXACO

    Enter researchers Kibeon Lee, PhD and Michael Ahston, PhD (HEXACO.org). Professors Lee and Ashton discovered that the FFM model did not replicate in non-English speaking cultures, yet, a different model repeatedly emerged… termed HEXACO. The founders of the HEXACO model discovered that broadening the lexical studies of personality to include descriptive adjectives from 12 languages (including English) produced a different model of personality – a model that contains six factors: honesty-humility, emotional control, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.

    Aspects of the HEXACO model make it a significant improvement over the FFM. First, the HEXACO is generalizable across cultures, where the FFM is not. Second, there is the addition of the honesty-humility factor which is not at all present in the FFM. Third, there are meaningful differences between the models in the interpretation of agreeableness and emotional control. Specifically, the HEXACO’s agreeableness dimension focuses on forgiveness and tolerance, which are aspects of the emotional stability dimension of the FFM, and the emotional control aspect of the HEXACO model focuses more on anxiety, sentimentality, and vulnerability. The dimensions of extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness remain similar to those in the FFM. In short, the HEXACO model of personality is a personality structure for the world – not just the United States – and researchers are quickly adopting this structure.

    Impact of the HEXACO Model in the Workplace

    In addition to the increase in cultural generalizability, research has found that the HEXACO model offers improvements in the predictive validity of assessments for important work outcomes. HEXACO measures have demonstrated incremental validity over the FFM in predicting outcomes such as job performance, workplace delinquency, manipulativeness, integrity, need for power, and egotism.     Specifically, the H-factor (honesty-humility) has been credited with driving the predictive power of the HEXACO model. The H-factor alone has demonstrated incremental validity over all other personality traits, and even over cognitive ability and popular traits like ‘grit’, in predicting job performance. In fact, the H-Factor negatively predicts deviant workplace behaviors (theft, sabotage, revenge, & aggression) and positively predicts desireable workplace behaviors (job performance, safety, adaptability, creativity, & innovation). Though additional research is required to see if these findings generalize to different samples and situations, the research literature strongly suggests that the next step in personality at work is here – it is the HEXACO model and it has important implications for hiring and developing organizational talent.

    If you want to learn more about the HEXACO model of personality visit:

    www.HEXACO.org or https://aoescience.com/aoe-assessments-overview/hexaco-test-based-on-personality-assessment-psychology/