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Educational and Psychological Measurement
DOI: 10.1177/0013164404267277
2004; 64; 992 Educational and Psychological Measurement
Kathleen Boies, Tae-Yong Yoo, Annik Ebacher, Kibeom Lee and Michael C. Ashton
Personality Inventory
Validity Studies Psychometric Properties of Scores on the French and Korean Versions of the Hexaco
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EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT
BOIES ET AL.
VALIDITY STUDIES
PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF SCORES ON THE
FRENCH AND KOREAN VERSIONS OF THE HEXACO
PERSONALITY INVENTORY
KATHLEEN BOIES
Concordia University
TAE-YONG YOO
Kwangwoon University
ANNIK EBACHER
Universit du Qubec Montral
KIBEOM LEE
University of Calgary
MICHAEL C. ASHTON
Brock University
Recent lexical studies of personality structure suggest that there are six independent
major dimensions of personality. The HEXACOPersonality Inventory (HEXACO-PI), a
new questionnaire that measures these six lexically derived personality constructs, was
examined in two different cultural contexts using samples of 149 Francophone and 211
Korean respondents. Scores on the scales of the French and Korean versions of the
HEXACO-PI were shown to have acceptable psychometric properties, including appro-
priate score distributions, high internal-consistency reliabilities, and low scale
intercorrelations. In addition, the HEXACO-PI variables showed the expected pattern of
correlations with markers of the Big Five and of lexical Honesty-Humility.
Keywords: language; personality theory; personality structure; test reliability; test
validity
Educational and Psychological Measurement, Vol. 64 No. 6, December 2004 992-1006
DOI: 10.1177/0013164404267277
2004 Sage Publications
992
A structural model of personality known as the Big Five (or the Five-
Factor Model) proposes that human personality traits can be summarized ef-
fectively using five basic dimensions, namely, Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (versus Neuroticism), and Intellect/
Imagination (or Openness to Experience). The five factors were originally
identified in lexical studies of personality structure, which are typically
based on self-ratings or peer ratings on personality-descriptive adjectives
(e.g., Goldberg, 1990; Tupes & Christal, 1961, 1992). Although the early
lexical studies that recovered the Big Five factors were primarily limited to
the English language, such investigations have been expanded to other Euro-
pean and Asian languages since the late 1980s. Interestingly, these investiga-
tions have not provided uniform support for every aspect of the Big Five
model. Rather, Ashton et al. (2004) have suggested that these recent lexical
studies have generated six, not just five, factors that are very similar to each
other across languages.
Based on these recent findings, Ashton et al. (2004) suggested that this
new six-dimensional model should be considered as a successor to the Big
Five model. Lee and Ashton (2004) subsequently referred to this new model
as the HEXACO model, using an acronym that indicates the number and
names of the six factors: Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E),
eXtraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness
to Experience (O). To facilitate empirical investigations of the newly pro-
posed structural model of personality, Lee and Ashton also developed a new
personality questionnaire named the HEXACO Personality Inventory
(HEXACO-PI). This inventory is the first formal operationalization of the six
lexical personality factors observed in various languages. In the present
research, we investigated the psychometric properties of scale scores on the
French and Korean language versions of the HEXACO-PI, which can be
used in the scientific evaluation of the six-dimensional model of personality
structure.
The HEXACO Model of Personality Structure
As mentioned above, Ashton et al. (2004) recently reviewed findings
obtained from eight lexical studies involving seven different languages
(Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, and Polish). The stud-
ies that were reviewed by Ashton et al. were referred to as standard lexical
BOIES ET AL. 993
The research reported in this article was partially supported by a research grant from
Kwangwoon University in 2003. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to
Kathleen Boies, Department of Management, John Molson School of Business, Concordia Uni-
versity, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montral, QC H3G 1M8 Canada (e-mail: kboies@
jmsb.concordia.ca); Kibeom Lee, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary,
AB T2N 1N4 Canada (e-mail: kibeom@ucalgary.ca); or Michael Ashton, Department of Psy-
chology, BrockUniversity, St. Catharines, ONL2S3A1Canada (e-mail: mashton@brocku.ca).
994 EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT
studies, in which ratings on a comprehensive set of personality-descriptive
terms were factor analyzed. (These investigations should be distinguished
from other lexical studies that have adopted a less restrictive variable selec-
tion criterion. The latter studies have included adjectives that are purely
evaluative and/or are related to physical attractiveness and are therefore out-
side the domain of normal variation in personality characteristics; see Ashton
& Lee, 2001, 2002, for a detailed discussion regarding adjective selection.)
Unlike previous reviews that considered five-factor solutions (e.g., Peabody
&De Raad, 2002), Ashton et al. focused on the six-factor solutions obtained
from these studies and found that a consistent set of six factors emerged
repeatedly.
Among the standard lexical studies, only the investigations of the Czech
(Hrebickova, 1995) and English (Saucier & Goldberg, 1996) languages
have failed to recover the complete set of the cross-culturally replicated six
factors described above. Moreover, a newEnglish lexical study conducted by
Ashton, Lee, and Goldberg (in press) showed that the six-factor solution of
the English personality lexicon is indeed quite similar to the cross-language
six-factor solutions. This suggests that the failure of the previous English lex-
ical study to observe the six factors replicated in other languages might be
due to idiosyncrasies of the methodology adopted. Taken together, this
new evidence suggests that the six-dimensional model of personality is a
more complete representation of personality structure than is the Big Five
model.
It is important to note that both the Big Five and HEXACO models were
derived from lexical studies of personality structure. Therefore, it is not sur-
prising that there is some similarity between these two models. Most notably,
the factors named Extraversion and Conscientiousness in the HEXACO
model are nearly identical to the factors of the same name in the Big Five
model. A factor named Openness to Experience in the HEXACO model is
similar to the Big Five Intellect/Imaginationfactor, except that cognitive abil-
ity or intelligence, a core content of the latter, is excluded fromthe HEXACO
Openness to Experience.
The HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality factors, however, are
conceptualized somewhat differently from their two counterparts in the Big
Five model. The revisions in the conceptualizations of these two factors are
consistent not only with the findings from lexical studies in several diverse
languages (see Ashton et al., 2004) but also with those from a newly con-
ducted English-language lexical study (see Ashton et al., in press). In these
lexical studies, the factor interpreted as Agreeableness always contains
adjectives related to irritability and temper, even though this content defines
(low) Emotional Stability in the Big Five model. The other factor interpreted
as Emotionality in these lexical studies has been defined primarily by fear/
anxiety, sentimentality/sensitivity, lack of self-assurance, and lack of brav-
ery, but not by irritability and temper as in the case of Big Five Emotional
Stability. HEXACOAgreeableness and Emotionality were conceptualized to
reflect these empirical findings, and these two HEXACO factors can be
regarded as rotational variants of Big Five Agreeableness and Emotional
Stability (Ashton et al., 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2004).
Finally, in the HEXACOmodel, there exists a newmajor dimension that is
additional to the Big Five factors, and this constitutes the most striking depar-
ture from the Big Five model. In the lexical studies of several languages
reviewed by Ashton et al. (2004), this factor has been defined by such content
as fairness, sincerity, modesty, and honesty versus slyness, deceit, conceit,
and greed. Accordingly, HEXACO-PI Honesty-Humility was devised to
capture the distinct, but related, traits that define this factor. Of note, markers
of the lexical Honesty-Humility factor were found by Ashton, Lee, and Son
(2000) to show substantial negative correlations (r = .40 to .45) with per-
sonality traits that represent exploitation and entitlement, such as Primary
Psychopathy (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995), Machiavellian-
ism (Christie & Geis, 1970), and Social Adroitness (Jackson, 1994), even
though these traits correlated weakly with all of the Big Five factors (absolute
rs all < .30).
Cross-Cultural Examination of the HEXACO-PI
Scores on the original English-language version of the HEXACO-PI,
which contained 18 items per scale, were found to have good psychometric
properties: In a sample of more than 500 college students, internal-consis-
tency reliabilities of scores on the six scales all exceeded .80, and none of the
scale score intercorrelations reached .30. (Recently, a longer version of the
test has been described by Lee & Ashton, 2004, but the present article is
based on the original, shorter version.) The six constructs measured by the
HEXACO-PI are derived from lexical factors recovered from several differ-
ent languages and are therefore likely to reflect fundamental individual dif-
ferences that can be applied in diverse cultural contexts. On the other hand,
however, items used to measure the HEXACO constructs were written in
English and were chosen on the basis of responses made primarily by North
American respondents. Therefore, despite the etic nature of the six con-
structs, it should be determined whether the new operationalization of those
constructs is applicable in other cultures.
Investigating the cross-cultural applicability of the HEXACO-PI is
important for several reasons. The HEXACO-PI is the first operation-
alization of the cross-culturally replicated six factors, and hence there exists
no such measure in other cultures yet. To evaluate empirically the status of
the HEXACO structure as a cross-culturally universal model of human per-
sonality, it is highly desirable that such empirical investigations be conducted
in many different cultures. Such investigations can be facilitated by the
importation of the HEXACO-PI. In addition, cross-cultural investigations
BOIES ET AL. 995
can also reveal some important differences across cultures that have implica-
tions both for personality assessment and for personality theory. For exam-
ple, there may be some interesting differences in the behaviors in which per-
sonality traits are manifested and in the distributional properties of some
personality traits.
In evaluating the performance of the French- and Korean-language ver-
sions of the HEXACO-PI, we planned to investigate several psychometric
properties of the scale scores of this inventory. First, we wanted to establish
the descriptive statistics of the scale scores to determine whether the mean
scores were reasonably close to the scale midpoint, thereby limiting the
skewness of the score distributions. Second, we wished to determine the
extent to which variance in scale scores was due to common itemvariance, so
we planned to investigate the internal-consistency reliability of the scale
scores. We expected that the HEXACO-PI scale scores would show reason-
ably high reliabilities, which would reflect the common saturation of the
items with variance due to the relevant dimension, but that these reliabilities
would not be extremely high, given the breadth of content associated with
each scale. Third, we wanted to find the extent to which the HEXACO-PI
scales were intercorrelated. Because these six variables are intended to be
reasonably independent, we expected that the correlations between them
would be rather modest in size. Finally, we also wished to investigate the cor-
relations of the HEXACO-PI scales with external markers of the Big Five
factors and of Honesty-Humility. These predictions are somewhat more
complex and are described in detail below.
Predictions involving the HEXACO Extraversion and Conscientiousness
scales were straightforward: Because of the close conceptual similarity
between each of these HEXACO scales and its Big Five counterpart, we
expected very strong convergent correlations between the corresponding
scales, along with low discriminant correlations. Similarly, we predicted a
moderately strong convergent correlation between HEXACO Openness to
Experience and Big Five Intellect/Imagination; however, we expected that
this value would be lower than those observed for the Extraversion and Con-
scientiousness factors, because of the somewhat different definitions of
Openness to Experience and of Intellect/Imagination. Specifically, as noted
above, the Openness to Experience construct excludes the element of intelli-
gence or cognitive ability that is part of the Intellect/Imagination construct.
Nevertheless, we expected that the common elements of creativity and of
intellectual curiosity would allow a reasonably high convergent correlation
between these two versions of this factor.
For the HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality scales, we hypothe-
sized a more complex pattern of correlations with the Big Five Agreeable-
ness and Emotional Stability scales. Because the HEXACO constructs
within this plane represent rotated variants of the Big Five dimensions, we
did not expect a univocal pattern of convergent and discriminant validities.
Instead, we predicted that high scores on HEXACOAgreeableness would be
associated with high levels of both Agreeableness and Emotional Stability in
the Big Five framework, whereas high scores on HEXACO Emotionality
would be associated with high scores on Big Five Agreeableness but low
scores on Big Five Emotional Stability. These expectations are consistent
with the HEXACO models proposed rerotation of the Agreeableness and
Emotional Stability factor axes.
With regard to Honesty-Humility, we planned to correlate the HEXACO
scale with an adjective-based marker scale of that construct. Naturally, we
expected sizable correlations between the two, but two other points should be
noted. First, we predicted that the HEXACO Honesty-Humility scale would
correlate more strongly with the adjective marker scale of Honesty-Humility
than with any of the Big Five marker scales. Second, despite the above pre-
diction, we also expected that the convergent correlations involving Honesty-
Humility would be somewhat weaker than those involving other factors,
because the HEXACO Honesty-Humility scale was constructed without
including any items that contain adjectives (e.g., I am an honest person).
This constraint was introduced during the test construction processin spite
of its predictable limiting effect on correlations with adjective marker
scalesbecause of the concern that Honesty-Humility-related adjectives
in particular might tend to elicit rather high means and would therefore pos-
sess skewed response distributions. Nevertheless, we expected reasonably
high convergent correlations, similar to the values of approximately .40
reported by Ashton et al. (2000) in their investigation of the relations
between lexical Honesty-Humility and several conceptually similar ques-
tionnaire scales, including Machiavellianism, Primary Psychopathy, and
Social Adroitness.
To summarize, then, we predicted the following relations between the
HEXACO scales and the external markers of the Big Five and Honesty-
Humility, within both the French (Canadian) and the Korean samples. First,
we expected very strong convergent correlations between the HEXACOand
Big Five measures of Extraversion and of Conscientiousness and moderately
strong convergent correlations between HEXACO Openness to Experience
and Big Five Intellect/Imagination. Second, we expected that HEXACO
Agreeableness would correlate positively with Big Five Agreeableness and
with Big Five Emotional Stability, whereas HEXACO Emotionality would
correlate positively with Big Five Agreeableness and negatively with Big
Five Emotional Stability. Finally, we expected that HEXACO Honesty-
Humility would correlate moderately strongly with the external marker scale
for Honesty-Humility (despite the absence of adjective-based items within
that HEXACO scale).
BOIES ET AL. 997
Study 1: French Version
Method
Participants. Participants were undergraduate students registered in a
variety of psychology and organizational behavior courses at a large Cana-
dian university located in Quebec (a predominantly French-speaking prov-
ince) and in which the language of instruction was French. Completed
questionnaires were obtained from 149 individuals (96 women, 52 men; 1
participant did not indicate gender). The mean age of the participants was
26.8 years, and the range in ages was from 18 to 62 years.
Measures. The 108-item version of the HEXACO-PI was translated into
French by one of the authors. This translated version was subsequently
reviewed separately by two of the authors for accuracy of content and form.
Responses were made using a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 =
strongly agree).
The Big Five and Honesty-Humility factors were assessed using adjective
marker scales used in a previous French lexical study (Boies, Lee, Ashton,
Pascal, &Nicol, 2001). These six adjective marker scales were chosen to rep-
resent the cross-language prototypes of the Big Five and Honesty-Humility
factors. Reliabilities of these adjective scale scores were found to be strong
(see Table 1). The response format was a 7-point scale for the adjective
marker scales (1 = very inaccurate to 7 = very accurate).
Procedure. Participants first completed self-ratings on the adjective
scales, followed by self-reports on the HEXACO-PI.
Results
Descriptive statistics, internal-consistency reliabilities, and scale
intercorrelations for scores on the HEXACO-PI in the Canadian sample
are shown in Table 1. (Note that sample sizes are slightly less than 149,
because a few respondents had several missing values.) The mean scores on
each scale are fairly close to the scale midpoint (3.0), and the standard devia-
tions are fairly large. The internal-consistency reliabilities of the scale scores
were rather high, ranging from .81 (for Conscientiousness) to .86 (for
Agreeableness). Finally, scale intercorrelations were generally low, with
the highest intercorrelation (between Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility)
reaching .27.
Table 1 shows the correlations of the HEXACO-PI scales with the adjec-
tive markers of the traditional Big Five factors and of Honesty-Humility. As
predicted, the convergent correlations were very high for Extraversion (r =
999
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.81) and Conscientiousness (r =.77). Also as expected, there was a fairly high
convergent correlation between HEXACO-PI Openness to Experience and
Big Five Intellect/Imagination (r = .53).
With regard to the Agreeableness/Emotionality plane, the expected pat-
tern of correlations was observed. HEXACO-PI Agreeableness correlated
positively with both Big Five Agreeableness (r =.48) and Big Five Emotional
Stability (r = .43), whereas HEXACO-PI Emotionality correlated positively
with Big Five Agreeableness (r = .32) and negatively with Big Five Emo-
tional Stability (r = .51).
Finally, the HEXACO-PI Honesty-Humility scale correlated .55 with the
adjective marker scale of Honesty-Humility. Interestingly, there were also
substantial correlations between HEXACO-PI Honesty-Humility and Big
Five Agreeableness (r = .43) and between HEXACO-PI Agreeableness and
the adjective marker scale of Honesty-Humility (r = .40). These correlations
reflect the rather high correlation (r = .70) between the Big Five Agreeable-
ness marker scale and the adjective marker scale of Honesty-Humility.
(Recall that the Big Five Agreeableness marker scale was derived from the
five-factor solutions obtained in various languages; in six-factor solutions,
there is generally a clearer separation between Agreeableness and Honesty-
Humility content. In the current data set, the correlation between HEXACO-
PI Honesty-Humility and Big Five Agreeableness drops to .06 if the adjective
marker scale of Honesty-Humility scale is partialed out; also, the correlation
between HEXACO-PI Agreeableness and the adjective marker scale of
Honesty-Humility drops to .09 if Big Five Agreeableness is partialed out.)
Study 2: Korean Version
Method
Participants. Two hundred and eleven undergraduate students (126 men,
85 women) at one large university in Seoul, South Korea, volunteered to par-
ticipate in the present study. Participants ages ranged from 19 to 26 years,
with a mean age of 21 years.
Measures. The 108-item version of the HEXACO-PI was translated into
the Korean language by the fourth author and then back-translated into Eng-
lish by the second author. The back-translated version was reviewed by the
fifth author and was found to be substantially similar to the original version,
so only minor modifications to a few items were made at this stage.
Unlike the adjective-based measure of the Big Five factors used in the
Canadian sample, a questionnaire measure of the Big Five factors was used in
this Korean sample as a means of generalizing the external validity of the
HEXACO-PI across different types of marker variables. Specifically, the Big
Five factors were measured using scales from the International Personality
Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999). Goldberg (1999) reported convergent
validities between Goldbergs (1992) 100 unipolar Big Five markers and
IPIP scales ranging from.54 to .73 (.66 to .90 after correcting for attenuation
due to scale score unreliability). Internal consistency reliabilities for scores
on the Korean version of the IPIPBig Five scales were found to be strong (see
Table 2).
Due to the absence of an established measure of lexical Honesty-Humility,
we measured this construct using an 18-adjective marker scale. The adjec-
tives selected were those that loaded most strongly on this factor in Hahn,
Lee, and Ashtons (1999) Korean lexical study. English translations of these
terms are as follows: honest, frank, truthful, (morally) conscientious, unas-
suming, and not pretending versus sly, cunning, pompous, hypocritical, pre-
tending, conceited, betraying, boasting, flattering, and two other terms
meaning calculating.
Internal consistency reliability for scores on this adjective marker scale
was .85. The response format used was a 5-point scale for all the personality
scales (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).
Procedure. Participants first completed self-ratings on the adjective and
IPIP scales, followed by self-reports on the HEXACO-PI.
Results
Table 2 gives the descriptive statistics, internal-consistency reliabilities,
and scale intercorrelations of scores on the HEXACO-PI scales in the Korean
sample. On each scale, mean scores are close to the midpoint of 3.0.
Reliabilities were all moderately high, ranging from.75 (Honesty-Humility)
to .88 (Extraversion). Scale intercorrelations were all low, with the highest
value (between Extraversion and Conscientiousness) reaching .25.
Correlations of the HEXACO-PI scales with the markers of the Big Five
factors and of Honesty-Humility are shown in Table 2. Convergent correla-
tions were very high for Conscientiousness (r = .85) and Extraversion (r =
.81) and moderately high for HEXACO-PI Openness to Experience with Big
Five Intellect/Imagination (r = .57). For the Agreeableness/Emotionality
plane, the predicted pattern of correlations was observed: HEXACO-PI
Agreeableness correlated .38 with Big Five Agreeableness and .43 with Big
Five Emotional Stability, and HEXACO-PI Emotionality correlated .32 with
Big Five Agreeableness and .61 with Big Five Emotional Stability. Interest-
ingly, Big Five Agreeableness also correlated .48 with HEXACO-PI
Extraversion, but this value is comparable to the correlation between the Big
Five scales measuring Agreeableness and Extraversion in this sample (r =
.44). Finally, with regard to Honesty/Humility, there was a moderately strong
BOIES ET AL. 1001
1002
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correlation (r =.43) between the HEXACO-PI scale and the adjective marker
scale.
Discussion
Overall, the results of the present study suggest that the French and
Korean versions of the HEXACO-PI are psychometrically sound as regards
expected direction and magnitude of the validity coefficients and reliability
estimates. In both Canada and Korea, scores on the HEXACO-PI scales
showed appropriate distributions, reasonably high internal-consistency
reliabilities, and low scale intercorrelations. These results indicate that,
within samples of normal young adults, the HEXACO-PI measures its six
intended constructs both reliably and independently. Moreover, the
HEXACO-PI scales also showed the expected pattern of correlations with
markers of the Big Five and of lexical Honesty-Humility. Specifically, there
were particularly high convergent correlations between HEXACO-PI and
Big Five measures of Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Similarly, the
convergent correlations between HEXACO-PI Openness to Experience and
Big Five Intellect/Imagination were moderately high, thus reflecting the sim-
ilar but not perfectly overlapping definitions of these two constructs. In addi-
tion, the correlations involving HEXACO-PI Agreeableness and Emotional-
ity, on one hand, with Big Five Agreeableness and Emotional Stability, on the
other hand, were consistent with the HEXACO models rotation of the axes
within this plane. Finally, the correlations involving HEXACO-PI and lexical
markers of Honesty-Humility were moderately high, in spite of the lack of
adjective-based items in this HEXACO-PI scale, and similar to the values
reported by Ashton et al. (2000) for various Honesty-Humility-related
constructs.
The two translated versions of the HEXACO-PI appear to capture the
original constructs fairly well in both Canadian and Korean contexts. There-
fore, researchers may find these measures useful in examining various sub-
stantive issues involving the newmodel of personality. One such issue might
be to show the predictive utility of the HEXACO model over the Big Five or
Five-Factor Model. Some recent research found that the HEXACO model,
by virtue of the inclusion of an Honesty-Humility factor, can outperform the
Big Five or Five-Factor Model in predicting some important real-life criteria
such as workplace deviance and delinquency (Lee, Ashton, & De Vries, in
press; see also Lee, Ashton, &Shin, in press) and sexual harassment proclivi-
ties (Lee, Gizzarone, & Ashton, 2003). A stronger case could be made if
these findings were obtained in diverse cultural contexts. In addition, as
Paunonen and Ashton (1998) suggested, showing the predictive utility of an
imported measure is one of the best ways of demonstrating the cultural
applicability of the imported scale.
BOIES ET AL. 1003
It is important to note, however, that these imported measures could be
improved to perform better within their own specific cultures. Within psy-
chological research, it is not uncommon to find that locally validated
responses to measures (even of imported constructs) demonstrate better
psychometric properties within the culture than imported measures do (e.g.,
Lee, Allen, Meyer, & Rhee, 2001). Therefore, it would be interesting to
develop alternative measures of the six lexical factors whose items are writ-
ten by, and chosen based on responses of, people from the culture in which
the measures will be used. Such an emic approach would nicely complement
some limitations that the etic approach might have in examining research
questions arising from the six-dimensional model of personality.
The 108-item version of the HEXACO-PI was used in the present
research, and this short version of the HEXACO-PI measures only the six
broad, higher order factors. However, Lee and Ashton (2004) recently devel-
oped a long version of the same personality inventory, which assesses 24 nar-
row traits (or facet-level measures) as well as the six higher order factors.
They found that the psychometric properties of scores on this new measure
could be favorably compared with other widely used omnibus personality
inventories. Given the importance of narrow facet measures in maximizing
the predictive ability of personality scales (Ashton, 1998; Paunonen & Ash-
ton, 2001), it is desirable to make the long version of the HEXACO-PI
available for use in various cultures.
In particular, it would be especially interesting to investigate the possibil-
ity of cross-cultural variation in the location of certain narrow traits within
the space of the six HEXACO factors. Although the HEXACO model is
based on the structure of the personality lexicon observed in several Euro-
pean and Asian languages, it is still possible that there might be some cultural
differences in behavioral manifestations of these major dimensions of per-
sonality. This suggests that the location of some facets might vary somewhat
across cultures; for example, investigations of the Five-Factor Model showed
that some measures of modesty loaded on an Agreeableness factor within
five-factor solutions in English-speaking cultures but loaded on an
Extraversion factor (at the negative pole) in Korea (McCrae & Costa, 1997).
Findings such as this are interesting from the perspective of cross-cultural
psychology and could have implications for our understanding of personality
structure and personality assessment.
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