The Dutch HEXACO Personality Inventory: Psychometric Properties, Self–Other Agreement, and Relations With Psychopathy Among Low and High Acquaintanceship Dyads

Abstract

The HEXACO model (Lee & Ashton, 2004, 2006) of personality structure is based on 6 dimensions that have been recovered in lexical studies of personality in various languages. In this study, we examined a Dutch version of the HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO–PI; Lee & Ashton, 2004) and found it to have satisfactory psychometric properties. Additionally, we examined the level of self–other agreement for the HEXACO–PI variables and the relation of HEXACO–PI Honesty-Humility with the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (Williams, Paulhus, & Hare, 2007) at varying levels of self–other acquaintanceship. Self–other agreement was found to be high, especially among dyads with high levels of acquaintanceship. Self-reported and other-reported Honesty-Humility and Emotionality were the strongest predictors of psychopathy. The relation between other-reported Honesty-Humility and self-reported psychopathy was near zero for dyads with low levels of acquaintanceship but was moderately strong for dyads with high levels of acquaintanceship.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgement is provided to Jan Feij, Annebel de Hoogh, Ed Caffin, Marleen Haentjens-van Meeteren, Maarten de Groot, Tim van der Heijden, Elise van der Kooij, Ewa Petiet, and Marleen Vriend for their help in data collection and to Lisette Thooft and Dick van Kampen for their help in translating, respectively, the HEXACO–PI and the SRP–III.

Notes

One item was added to the Erratic Lifestyle subscale because one of the original English items showed very low factor loadings on the Erratic Lifestyle factor in the Williams et al. (2003) study. We retained the Dutch translation of the original item but added a somewhat differently worded item to better capture the essence of the Erratic Lifestyle concept. Consequently, the Erratic Lifestyle subscale and the full Psychopathy scale contained 11 and 41 items, respectively.

∗ p < .05.

∗∗ p < .01.

^a N = 37.

^b N = 28.

^c N = 51.

^d N = 79.

^e N = 48.

∗ p < .05.

∗∗ p < .01.

However, when controlling for the gender of the target, both of these low-acquaintanceship, self–other convergent correlations of Emotionality became weaker, declining from .52 to .32 for casual acquaintances and from .43 to .26 for coworkers. In contrast, the self–other convergent correlation of Conscientiousness was largely unchanged when target gender was controlled, declining from .53 to .51.

^a N = 289.

^b N = 243.

^c N = 116.

^d N = 127.

∗ p < .05.

∗∗ p < .01.