The Hexaco Personality Inventory

Saw a reference to this while scrolling through my Twitter feed. As, being childfree, I am able to be all carefree and indulgent on Sunday mornings, decided to start the day by doing this (as an alternative to cleaning the bathroom, which was the actual plan). Can’t say I’d ever heard of this one. I wouldn't say I was a devotee of these sorts of tools, but do quite enjoy them, partly no doubt through being fond of structure and classifying things, or some such.

The Hexaco PI claims to be “a measure of the six major dimensions of personality”. It’s made up of six broad "factor" scales and 25 narrow "facet" scales. There's presumably something somewhere about how they came up with these particular six, but I haven't as yet bothered to read it. It’s by two people with ‘PhD’ suffixed to their names, in that way Americans do, though that isn’t especially reassuring given that a PhD can be in just about any subject. (I had always assumed the PhD of a former team lead at CfBT was in some sort of educational topic, but later discovered that it was in fact in food and nutrition.)

The blurb assured me that no risk, harm, or discomfort was anticipated in completing the HEXACO-PI-R, other than that the results might not match my expectations and therefore might be disappointing.

My results on the six broad "factor" scales:

Of the six broad ‘factor’ scales, I’m an outlier on two: eXtraversion and Agreeableness. Neither particularly a surprise though I suppose the first is easier to publicly admit to. My score on Agreeableness is lower than my eXtraversion score, I suppose crudely indicating that I'm much more disagreeable than I am introverted. According to the blurb: 'Persons with very high scores on the Agreeableness scale forgive the wrongs that they suffered, are lenient in judging others, are willing to compromise and cooperate with others, and can easily control their temper'. I’d agree that I wouldn’t score highly on any of these though I work on the third and fourth in order to, you know, hold down a job. I’m close to the average on Honesty-Humility, Emotionality and Openness to Experience, and above average on Conscientiousness. Which is good I suppose.