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Personality

HEXACO Personality.

The HEXACO-60 personality assessment measuring six dimensions: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. Each dimension is measured with 10 items, providing a balanced personality profile with the unique HEXACO Honesty-Humility factor.

Time
About 15 min
Questions
60
Measures 6 traits

Instructions

Read each of the 60 statements and rate how much you agree or disagree with it. There are no right or wrong answers - answer honestly based on how you actually are.

What to expect

Scientifically validated
Based on established psychological research
Private results
Your data is secure and private
Detailed results
Comprehensive insights and recommendations

About the HEXACO Personality Test

HEXACO is a six-factor model of personality developed from the same lexical research tradition as the Big Five. Its distinguishing feature is a sixth factor, Honesty-Humility, that the five-factor model does not measure separately. The name is an acronym for the six dimensions: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.

This 60-item version uses 10 statements per factor and takes about 15 minutes. You rate how much you agree or disagree with each statement, and your results are compared with other people, so you see where you stand on each factor among them rather than a raw number in isolation. It is the balanced HEXACO option here: long enough for dependable factor scores, short enough to finish comfortably in one sitting.

Items
60
Duration
About 15 min
Format
5-point agree-disagree ratings, 10 items per factor
Free result
Free, right after the test: your strongest factor and its band. The other factors are named and covered in the full report
Full report
With a free account: the full report for every factor

What it measures

Each of the six factors is a continuous spectrum, not a category, and the report describes both ends of every dimension without treating either as better. The factor most people come to HEXACO for is Honesty-Humility: it captures sincerity, fairness, modesty, and a low drive to exploit others for personal gain. Where the Big Five spreads these tendencies thinly across Agreeableness and the low end of other traits, HEXACO isolates them, which is why it adds incremental prediction of ethically relevant behavior.

  • Honesty-HumilitySincerity, fairness, modesty, and low entitlement versus a willingness to manipulate, cut corners, or seek status and material gain at others’ expense.
  • EmotionalityFearfulness, anxiety, sentimentality, and need for emotional support versus emotional detachment and tolerance of stress and risk.
  • ExtraversionSocial self-esteem, sociability, and liveliness versus a quieter, more reserved orientation to social life.
  • AgreeablenessForgiveness, gentleness, and patience versus a more critical, quick-to-anger interpersonal style. In HEXACO this is distinct from honesty.
  • ConscientiousnessOrganization, diligence, and prudence versus a more flexible, spontaneous relationship with plans, precision, and impulse control.
  • Openness to ExperienceAesthetic appreciation, curiosity, and unconventional thinking versus a preference for the familiar, practical, and conventional.

The science and validity

HEXACO emerged from lexical studies in which personality-descriptive adjectives were factor-analyzed across multiple languages. When the analysis was extended beyond English and Germanic samples, a sixth factor recovered consistently, and the resulting six-factor structure has since been replicated across many languages and cultures. The model rotates the Big Five Agreeableness and Neuroticism space somewhat and adds Honesty-Humility as a genuinely separate dimension.

The practical payoff of the sixth factor is measurable. Honesty-Humility predicts outcomes that the Big Five accounts for only weakly: counterproductive and deviant workplace behavior, dishonesty in economic games, and the dark-triad traits of manipulation and exploitation. Our scale uses the HEXACO-PI-R 60-item form. Each 10-item factor scale gives consistent scores (reliability typically in the high .70s, where 1 would be perfect), and your scores are compared with other people, with a detailed report generated from your scored profile by strict scoring rules.

References

  1. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO-60: A short measure of the major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(4), 340-345.
  2. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(2), 329-358.
  3. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 150-166.
  4. 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, 18(2), 139-152.

Read more about our standards: How our tests are built and validated.

Sample items

  • "Even when it would work, winning favors through compliments feels wrong to me."Illustrative Honesty-Humility-style item - answered on an agree-disagree scale (not a scored item).
  • "A small setback can occupy my thoughts for the rest of the day."Illustrative Emotionality-style item.
  • "I would rather explore a museum I have never visited than rewatch a favorite film."Illustrative Openness-style item.

Frequently asked questions

HEXACO vs Big Five - what is the difference?

Both come from the same lexical research tradition and share Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness almost directly. The two key differences are that HEXACO adds a sixth factor, Honesty-Humility, that the Big Five does not measure on its own, and it splits the Big Five’s Agreeableness and Neuroticism content differently into HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality. In practice the sixth factor lets HEXACO predict ethically relevant behavior, such as workplace deviance and exploitative tendencies, more directly than the Big Five.

What does Honesty-Humility actually measure?

It captures sincerity, fairness, modesty, and a low drive to exploit other people for personal gain. People high on it avoid manipulation and feel little entitlement; people low on it are more willing to flatter, cut corners, or break rules to get ahead. It is the factor that most distinguishes HEXACO from the Big Five and the one with the strongest links to honesty in research settings.

Is this HEXACO test free?

Yes. Taking the test is free, with no account required to start, and your free result shows your strongest factor and its band, while the other five are named and covered in the report. The full report, free with an account, adds in-depth, factor-by-factor interpretation written against your specific score bands.

How long does the HEXACO-60 take?

About 15 minutes. There are 60 statements, 10 for each of the six factors, and most people answer each in a few seconds. There is no time limit, so answer honestly rather than quickly.

How accurate is a 60-item HEXACO test?

With 10 items per factor, scale reliabilities for the HEXACO-60 form typically fall around the high .70s, which is adequate for dependable broad-factor scores. What this length cannot do is resolve the narrow facets within each factor. For facet-level detail, the 100-item extended version measures each factor with more items and reports the sub-traits separately.

Who built this test?

The instrument is based on the HEXACO-PI-R developed by Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton. The scoring and report were built and reviewed by Dr. Milos Kankaras, PhD psychometrician, whose background includes large-scale assessment work for the OECD, the EU, and UNESCO.

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