The Sixth Trait the Big Five Missed
Honesty-Humility: sincerity, fairness, greed and modesty
The Big Five was built by analysing personality words in English. When researchers repeated the work across many languages at once, a sixth factor kept appearing that English alone had not revealed: the tendency to be sincere, fair, unimpressed by wealth and unbothered about status. It is the factor that predicts whether someone will exploit you when they can get away with it, and the other five barely capture it.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
This one is harder to answer honestly than most, for obvious reasons. Try to answer about what you have actually done rather than about what you would like to be true.
What it measures
Four facets. Sincerity is whether you get what you want without manipulating people. Fairness is whether you would take an advantage that does not belong to you. Greed avoidance is how little you care about wealth and luxury. Modesty is whether you think you are owed special treatment. Together they form one broad trait, but people are rarely even across all four.
Based on: HEXACO model, Honesty-Humility factor (Ashton & Lee)
Possible results
Sincerity
Getting what you want without working people.
Fairness
Whether you would take an advantage nobody would catch.
Greed avoidance
How little wealth and luxury pull at you.
Modesty
Whether you feel entitled to special treatment.
Common questions
How is this different from agreeableness in the Big Five?
Agreeableness is about tolerance - how much provocation you absorb before you retaliate. Honesty-Humility is about exploitation - whether you would take advantage of someone who could not stop you. They come apart in a specific way: a person can be warm, patient and easy to get along with, and still cheat you when the opportunity is clean. That combination is exactly what the sixth factor was needed to describe.
Why did the Big Five miss it?
Because of the language it was built in. Both models come from analysing the personality adjectives that ordinary people use, and the Big Five came out of English word lists. When the same method was applied to many languages at once - including Korean, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Dutch - a sixth cluster around sincerity and modesty separated out consistently. It was not hidden; English simply did not slice it off on its own.
Does a low score make me a bad person?
No, and reading it that way will stop you learning anything from it. Most people score somewhere in the middle, and a moderate score describes ordinary self-interest rather than villainy. The score is also situational in a way that matters: environments that reward the behaviour produce more of it, which is why the same person can be scrupulous in one job and not in another.
Sources
- Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research.
- Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
- Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., & de Vries, R. E. (2014). The HEXACO Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, and Emotionality factors: A review of research and theory. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
An honest note The honest problem with this test is the test itself. Honesty-Humility is the one trait where people have the strongest reason to answer flatteringly, and self-report cannot tell the difference between someone who is sincere and someone who wants to appear sincere. Research using observer ratings from people who know the participant well finds real agreement, which is reassuring - but it also means your own score is best read as a starting point. A low score is more trustworthy than a high one, because almost nobody exaggerates in that direction.