Is it time to replace the Big Five personality model? Factorial structure of the NEO PI-R in a community sample of Spanish adults

Abstract

Recent studies have revived the issue of whether the five-factor personality model or Big Five is the most valid to summarize the most relevant personality traits or whether, on the contrary, the basic structure of personality traits would better fit a six-factor model such as the HEXACO model: Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). In a Spanish community sample of 682 adults, the factorial structure of the 30 facets of the NEO-Revised Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and its 16 facets common to the HEXACO model was analyzed. In two subsamples of participants, the internal structure of the NEO PI-R, of 30 and 16 facets, fit the five-factor Big Five model better than the six-factor HEXACO model. In addition, the internal 30-facet structure of the NEO-PI-R replicated that obtained in the original US validation and those previously obtained in Spain, although the latter used different participant samples (people evaluated in personnel selection processes, university students). These results suggest that, at least in Spain, the five-factor personality model or Big Five is still the most valid taxonomy of personality traits.

Keywords:

• Big five model
• factor analysis
• five-factor model
• HEXACO model
• personality traits
• validity

Ethics statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee of the Clinical and Health Psychology Unit of the Complutense University of Madrid. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a researcher contract of the INVESTIGO Program funded by the European Union, the Spanish Ministry of Labour and Social Economy and the Community of Madrid, and granted to the first author. The study was also supported by a research grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (ref. PGC2018-098387-B-I00) granted to the last two authors.