If you’ve already taken a Big Five test, you might have finished it with a nagging sense that something was missing — that it told you how organized and outgoing you are, but not whether you’d return the extra change or quietly pocket it. That missing piece is exactly why the HEXACO model exists. Take the 60 statements above, then read on for what each of your six scores means, how to read them, and where any test like this runs out of road.
In this guide
What is the HEXACO personality model?
HEXACO is a six-factor model of personality proposed by the psychologists Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton in the early 2000s. The name spells out the six traits: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience.
It comes from the same starting point as the Big Five: the idea that the traits that matter most in human life leave fingerprints in language. Researchers collect the adjectives people use to describe each other and look at which words cluster together. When Ashton, Lee and colleagues compared lexical studies in seven languages (Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean and Polish) in a 2004 paper, they found a similar set of six clusters rather than five in all of them. The extra one was about sincerity, fairness, modesty and indifference to status — honesty-humility.
HEXACO isn’t meant to throw out the Big Five so much as reorganize it. Three traits — extraversion, conscientiousness and openness — look much the same in both models. The other three are rearranged, and one is new.
How is HEXACO different from the Big Five?
The headline difference is Honesty-Humility. In the Big Five, being fair-minded and unpretentious is partly folded into agreeableness. HEXACO gives it its own axis, which makes room for an important distinction: someone can be warm, charming and easy to get along with while also being quietly self-serving — or blunt and prickly while being scrupulously fair. A single agreeableness score can’t tell those two people apart. HEXACO can.
The second difference is where anger and sentimentality live. In the Big Five, a short temper usually counts toward neuroticism, and tender-heartedness counts toward agreeableness. HEXACO swaps them. Its Agreeableness is about patience, forgiveness and flexibility — how you respond when someone frustrates you. Its Emotionality covers fearfulness, worry, the need for support and sentimental attachment to others — but not irritability.
That’s why Emotionality isn’t simply a renamed neuroticism. A high scorer might cry at every wedding, want a friend on the phone during a scary appointment and feel others’ pain sharply, while still being slow to anger. The models carve up the same human territory along slightly different lines.
Why does honesty-humility deserve its own trait? Because it describes something people care about intensely in each other and rarely get to measure directly: whether someone will treat you fairly when nobody is watching and there’s something to gain. It covers sincerity (not manipulating people with flattery or a performance), fairness (not cheating or exploiting), greed avoidance (not being driven by money and luxury) and modesty (not feeling entitled to special treatment). Most of us have known someone delightful at a dinner party who turned out to be hard to trust with money or a secret. That’s the gap this trait was added to capture.
What do the six HEXACO traits mean?
Each trait is a spectrum, and both ends have value. Here’s what high and low scores tend to look like in everyday life.
- Honesty-HumilityHigh: sincere, fair, modest and not especially interested in wealth or status. Low: more strategic, comfortable with flattery or self-promotion, drawn to luxury and recognition.
- EmotionalityHigh: sentimental, empathic, anxious about risk, comforted by support. Low: tough-minded, independent, calm when things get scary, less moved by sad stories.
- ExtraversionHigh: socially confident, talkative, lively, at ease in groups. Low: reserved, private, happiest with a few people, less keen on the spotlight.
- AgreeablenessHigh: patient, forgiving, accepting, open to criticism. Low: quicker to anger, slower to forgive, more critical, firm in their own views.
- ConscientiousnessHigh: organized, hardworking, careful, detail-oriented. Low: flexible, spontaneous, comfortable with a little mess, quicker to act than to plan.
- Openness to ExperienceHigh: curious, imaginative, moved by art and nature, at ease being unconventional. Low: practical, traditional, focused on the concrete and the proven.
How do I read my HEXACO test results?
This test is built from public-domain items in the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), which researchers use widely. The IPIP includes scales written to measure constructs similar to those in Lee and Ashton’s model, and we drew ten statements per trait from them, spread across each trait’s facets, word for word. It is not the official HEXACO inventory, the HEXACO-PI-R, which is a separate copyrighted questionnaire — think of this as an informed, free approximation of the same six traits.
Roughly half the statements count against their trait rather than toward it, so agreeing with everything won’t push your scores up. Each answer earns 0 to 4 points, and your percentage is the share of the maximum you earned. Those percentages describe where you fell within the test’s own range, not how you compare with anyone else: a 65% means you described yourself toward the high end of that trait, not that you outscored 65% of people. We don’t have population norms for this version and won’t pretend otherwise.
Read your profile as a pattern, not six separate grades. High Honesty-Humility with high Extraversion looks like a warm, genuine people person; the same Honesty-Humility with low Extraversion looks like a quiet straight shooter. High Emotionality with high Agreeableness often feels tender and gentle; high Emotionality with low Agreeableness can feel intense and fiery. Ask which combinations ring true — and which ones the people who know you would argue with.
In close relationships, the most revealing traits tend to be the ones you and a partner differ on. Two people far apart on Agreeableness may fight about how long a fight should last. A gap in Honesty-Humility can show up as quiet friction about money, appearances or how much a little exaggeration matters. Naming those gaps calmly — maybe after talking them through with Iris first — usually goes better than arguing about them as character flaws.
What can’t a HEXACO personality test tell you?
A self-report test can only reflect how you see yourself, and that’s especially tricky with Honesty-Humility: a genuinely humble person may underrate their own fairness, while someone who cares a lot about image may describe themselves generously. If your score surprises you, sit with the individual statements rather than the number.
Your results also aren’t a label or an assessment of your health, and they don’t predict how good a partner, parent or colleague you’ll be. They describe tendencies, which shift a little with mood and circumstance and can change gradually over years. Sixty statements is enough for a useful sketch, not a fine-grained measurement, and a score near the 40% or 60% boundary could land in a different band next time you take it.
There’s also the context problem. Plenty of people are endlessly patient at work and short-fused at home, or bold with friends and shy with strangers. A test asks for your general tendency, so it averages over those differences. If a score feels wrong, it may be right about one part of your life and wrong about another — which is worth knowing too.
Used well, a HEXACO profile gives you better language for conversations you’re already having — with yourself, a partner or a friend — about why you react the way you do.
Sometimes it helps to say the messy, unfiltered version out loud to someone who won’t judge it. That’s Iris — text her like you’d text a close friend, and she’ll help you untangle it. She remembers the thread, so next time you can pick up right where you left off.
Frequently asked questions
What does HEXACO stand for?
HEXACO is an acronym for the model’s six traits: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. Conveniently, “hexa” is also Greek for six. The model was proposed by Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton as a six-factor alternative to the Big Five.
Is HEXACO better than the Big Five?
Neither is simply better. HEXACO adds honesty-humility as a separate trait, which helps describe fairness, sincerity and modesty more precisely. The Big Five is older and has a larger body of research behind it. If you’re curious about values-related traits like honesty, HEXACO gives you more to work with.
What does a low Honesty-Humility score mean?
It means you described yourself as more strategic, status-aware or comfortable with self-promotion than average for this test’s range. It doesn’t make you a bad person — low scorers are often ambitious and effective in competitive settings. The useful question is whether that style ever costs you trust with people you care about.
Is this the official HEXACO-PI-R?
No. The official inventory is a separate copyrighted questionnaire. This free test uses public-domain IPIP items written to measure constructs similar to the HEXACO traits, so your scores are a close approximation, not the official instrument. It’s a good starting point for self-reflection.
How long does the HEXACO personality test take?
About ten minutes for all 60 statements. Answer quickly and describe yourself as you generally are now, not as you’d like to be or as you behave in one specific setting. There’s no sign-up, and your answers aren’t stored with your name.
Sources
- Ashton, Lee et al. (2004), A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology