The HEXACO Personality Factors in the Indigenous Personality Lexicons of English and 11 Other Languages

Two studies tested the correspondence between six dimensions obtained in lexical studies of personality structure and the proposed HEXACO personality framework. Study 1 examined the English personality lexicon using 449 adjectives selected according to rated frequency of use in personality description. Six validimax-rotated factors derived from adjective self-ratings showed strong convergent and weak discriminant correlations with questionnaire markers of the HEXACO factors; the six adjective dimensions were also recovered from peer ratings. In Study 2, lay judges rated the conceptual similarity between HEXACO factor descriptions and adjective lists summarizing the six indigenous lexical personality factors of each of 12 languages. Across languages, a pattern of strong convergent and weak discriminant similarity ratings was observed; similarity ratings for the English factors of Study 1 were comparable to those for other languages' factors. Results indicate that the six dimensions of the HEXACO framework are recovered from the personality lexicons of various languages.