Age trends in HEXACO-PI-R self-reports
Section snippets
Age trends in the HEXACO personality factors
Some important questions in personality research concern differences in personality as a function of a person’s age. One such question is that of “rank-order” stability in personality trait levels: To what extent do people maintain their standing on a given personality trait, relative to other persons of their own age cohort, across various segments of the lifespan? Another question is that of mean-level personality differences across age groups: How much higher or lower is the average of a
Method
The participants in the present research were persons who provided anonymous self-reports on the online English-language 100-item HEXACO-PI-R at the hexaco.org website between October 19, 2014 and October 18, 2015. The HEXACO-PI-R items were administered in the English language, in their standard order, and with the standard response scale with options ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Participants received a personality summary profile based on their self-report
Results
Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5, Fig. 6 show the mean z-scores on each HEXACO component (and on the four facet scales that primarily define that component) as averaged across men and women for each year of age from 14 to 74 inclusive. The sample sizes and means for men and women of each year of age are given in the Supplementary Materials. Note that given the very large sample size of this investigation, in describing our results we follow Soto et al. (2011) in focusing on the patterns
Summary of results for HEXACO factors and facets
We begin by summarizing results briefly for each HEXACO personality dimension:
Honesty-Humility showed a downward age trend during the teen years and then an upward age trend through age 60, with a full standard deviation difference between 18 and the 60s. Age trends for Emotionality and Extraversion differed by facet, but the overall trends were downward for Emotionality and upward for Extraversion. Agreeableness showed only weak age trends, with levels around age 40 being slightly lower than
Limitations and future directions
One limitation of the present participant sample is that the participants were self-selected. First they came to the hexaco.org website by searching for an online personality inventory or by following links found in online news articles or provided by other persons. Then they agreed to complete the HEXACO-PI-R in exchange for some basic scoring and interpretive information generated from their personality self-reports. Our descriptive data based on this online sample (see Lee & Ashton, in press
Conclusion
Our analyses of age differences in the HEXACO personality dimensions indicate some similarities with previous findings based on the Big Five factors, but also some differences and some new results. Particularly noteworthy are (a) the upward trends from the late teens through late middle age for Honesty-Humility and its facets, and (b) for the other five dimensions, the considerable differences in age trends between facets belonging to the same factor and even between items belonging to the same
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant 410-2011-0089.
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