- Email: [email protected]
Sensation seeking, risk-taking, and the HEXACO model of personality
Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Sensation seeking, risk-taking, and the HEXACO model of personality Reinout E. de Vries *, Anita de Vries, Jan A. Feij VU University Amsterdam, Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 28 January 2009 Received in revised form 28 April 2009 Accepted 26 May 2009 Available online 23 June 2009 Keywords: HEXACO Sensation seeking Risk-taking
a b s t r a c t Previous research has related sensation seeking and risk-taking to the Big Five or Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality. Recently, based on a reanalysis of the main lexical studies, a six-dimensional HEXACO model of personality has been proposed. In three studies, the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and the IPIP Risk-Taking scale are related to the factor and selected facet scales of the (Revised) HEXACO Personality Inventory. In agreement with the FFM, sensation seeking and risk-taking are significantly related to Openness to Experience, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. However, sensation seeking and risk-taking are also significantly related to HEXACO Honesty–Humility and Emotionality. Based on the findings, a HEXACO Sensation Seeking Scale is designed from the facets Fearfulness, Unconventionality, Creativity, Fairness, Prudence, Social Boldness, and Sociability, which is found to have strong convergent correlations with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking in all of the studies. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Sensation seeking and risk-taking have been associated with a plethora of important behaviors and outcomes in daily life. For instance, sensation seeking has been found to be an important correlate of a range of high-risk behaviors, such as drinking, smoking, drug use, and risky sexual behaviors (Zuckerman, 2008). Although some have argued that sensation seeking and risk-taking constitute an important personality dimension on their own (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993) or lie beyond the Big Five (Paunonen & Jackson, 2000), others have argued that they share a substantial amount of variance with Big Five or Five Factor Model (FFM) measures (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The latter stance seems to receive most support. Various studies have shown that, in terms of the Five Factor Model, sensation seeking and risk-taking share a substantial amount of variance with Openness to Experience and Extraversion, and to a lesser degree with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, while Neuroticism or Emotional Stability has been found to share almost no variance with sensation seeking or risk-taking (Aluja, García, & García, 2003; Dahlen & White, 2006; Zuckerman et al., 1993). When rephrased in terms of the Big Five, compared to people low on sensation seeking, people high on sensation seeking seem to be characterized by a higher level of Openness to Experience and Extraversion and a somewhat lower level of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, but no differences in Emotional Stability or Neuroticism. Recently, a new structural model of personality has been proposed that posits six instead of five main dimensions of personality. This model, the HEXACO model of personality, is based on the same * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 20 5988718. E-mail address: [email protected] (Reinout E. de Vries). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.05.029
lexical studies that have given rise to the Big Five model (Ashton et al., 2004). The HEXACO acronym stands for the following six dimensions, Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Compared to the Big Five, some similarities and changes can be observed in the HEXACO model. The HEXACO model is similar to the Big Five model with respect to the three dimensions Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. The most important change is the addition of a new personality dimension, Honesty–Humility, which represents individual differences in tendencies to be sincere, fair, and unassuming versus manipulative, greedy, and pretentious. The second most important change is the rotation of the Big Five dimensions Agreeableness and Emotional Stability. In the HEXACO model, variance associated with irritability, which in the Big Five model is associated with low Emotional Stability, is assigned to HEXACO Agreeableness instead. As a consequence, HEXACO Agreeableness represents individual differences in tendencies to be cooperative, patient, and lenient versus to be critical, irritable, and unforgiving towards others. Variance associated with sentimentality, which in the Big Five model is associated with Agreeableness, is assigned to HEXACO Emotionality instead. As a consequence, HEXACO Emotionality represents individual differences in the experience of anxiety, sentimentality, and empathy versus fearlessness, detachment, and independence. Evidence thus far shows that the HEXACO model is a robust model, with high levels of cross-cultural correspondence of the six lexical dimensions in 12 languages with the six HEXACO dimensions (Lee & Ashton, 2008) and significant and meaningful incremental validity of Honesty– Humility in the prediction of integrity-related criteria over and above Five Factor Model measures (Ashton & Lee, 2008). The abovementioned changes may have some implications for the ability to explain variance in sensation seeking or risk-taking.
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
Compared to the Big Five model, no big differences are likely to be observed in the relations between sensation seeking or risk-taking and Openness to Experience, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, because these three dimensions show a strong overlap with the Big Five dimensions. However, compared to the Big Five model, there may be some changes in the relations with sensation seeking or risk-taking due to the different rotational positions of Agreeableness and Emotionality, and due to the addition of Honesty–Humility in the HEXACO model of personality. First of all, the different rotational position of HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality may have some implications for the relations of these dimensions with sensation seeking and risk-taking. Sensation seeking and risk-taking have been associated with impulsiveness and fearlessness (Arnaut, 2006). In the FFM or Big Five model, Neuroticism (or low Emotional Stability) pertains to a mix of irritability (i.e., low patience) and Fearfulness. Interestingly enough, this mix may counteract the possibility to find significant relations between Neuroticism and sensation seeking or risk-taking because Neuroticism may be positively associated with sensation seeking through its irritability or lack of impulsivity component while it is at the same time negatively associated with sensation seeking through its Fearfulness component. In the HEXACO model, as explained above, these two components are aligned with two different dimensions. HEXACO Agreeableness contains the lack of irritability (patience) component which may be negatively associated with sensation seeking (i.e., disagreeableness or impatience may be positively associated with sensation seeking), while HEXACO Emotionality contains the Fearfulness component, which may create a negative association with sensation seeking or risktaking. Secondly, the addition of Honesty–Humility may offer incremental variance in the prediction of sensation seeking or risk-taking. Sensation seeking has been found to distinguish criminal offenders from the general population (Herrero & Colom, 2008) and to be related to a general deviance factor, which includes law abidance, sexual risks, and drug use (Zuckerman, 2007). Of the subscales of the Sensation Seeking Scale, Disinhibition has been noted as one of the most important components in the explanation of counternormative behaviors. Jonah, Thiessen, and Au Yeung (2001) found Disinhibition to be most strongly related to violations of traffic norms and rules. Disinhibition has also been found to be one of the most important sensation seeking predictors of illegal drug use (Andrucci, Archer, Pancoast, & Gordon, 1989). Disinhibition and the related construct Impulsiveness have been found to be related to verbal and physical aggression in school children (Joireman, Anderson, & Strathman, 2003; Wittmann, Arce, & Santisteban, 2008). All of these counternormative activities involve rule-breaking behaviors and violations of societal norms, which may indicate that Honesty–Humility, which has been negatively associated with antisocial and counterproductive behaviors (Lee, Ashton, & de Vries, 2005), is involved. To sum up, this study will investigate the relations of the HEXACO model of personality with sensation seeking and risk-taking. We are specifically interested in the relations between HEXACO Emotionality and Honesty–Humility with sensation seeking, its subscales, and risk-taking. To investigate these relations, we have conducted three comparable studies. In the first study, which was conducted in a student sample, the HEXACO-PI (Lee & Ashton, 2004) was investigated together with the Dutch version of the Sensation Seeking Scale of Zuckerman (Van den Berg & Feij, 2002; Zuckerman, 1979). In the second study, conducted in a community sample, we administered the HEXACO-PI together with the Sensation Seeking Scale and the IPIP Risk-Taking scale (Goldberg, 1999; Jackson, 1994). In the third study, we employed the Revised HEXACO-PI (HEXACO-PI-R) together with the Sensation Seeking Scale and IPIP Risk-Taking.
537
2. Method 2.1. Samples and procedures 2.1.1. Study 1 Undergraduate psychology and educational science students filled out the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and, a week later, the HEXACO-PI. A paper-and-pencil version of the SSS was returned by 339 students. One week later, 349 respondents completed the HEXACO-PI through the internet. The questionnaires were matched on student numbers. A total of 304 matched students (82.9% women), with a mean age of 20.6 years (sd = 3.4), filled out both questionnaires. 2.1.2. Study 2 Community respondents were recruited through the internet in return for the possibility to obtain a personality profile and the chance to win a gift voucher. Respondents willing to participate were provided with two internet links. The first one linked to the HEXACO-PI and background variables and the second one, which they received a week after the first one, linked to the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. The sample consisted of 276 participants, of whom 263 (60.8% female) filled out all questionnaires. The mean age of the final usable sample was 38.3 years (sd = 12.1) and consisted of respondents with the following educational levels: 0.8% junior high school, 7.2% high school, 8.4% lower-level occupational training, 34.2% middle-level occupational training, 32.3% higher-level occupational training, and 17.1% University. 2.1.3. Study 3 As in Study 1, the sample consisted of first-year psychology and educational science students. A total of 169 students (85.2% women), with a mean age of 20.1 (sd = 2.3), filled out the HEXACOPI-R, the SSS, and the IPIP Risk-Taking scale. 2.2. Instruments 2.2.1. HEXACO-PI and HEXACO-PI-R The HEXACO Personality Inventory is a questionnaire operationalization of the HEXACO six-dimensional personality model (Lee & Ashton, 2004). The HEXACO-PI, which was used in the first two studies, consists of 208 items, divided among four facets for each of the six main scales, plus two additional facets, Altruism and Negative Self-Evaluation (Lee & Ashton, 2006). These two additional facets measure so-called ‘interstitial’ regions in the HEXACO model, that is, they pertain to blends of two or more factors in the six-dimensional personality space. The HEXACO-PI-R, which was used in the third study, consists of 200 items and deviates from the HEXACO-PI in the replacement of the Extraversion Expressiveness facet by the facet Social Self-Esteem and by the removal of the interstitial Negative Self-Evaluation facet. All items in both questionnaires were rated on 1–5 (disagree–agree) scales. The psychometric properties of the Dutch HEXACO-PI scales are reported in De Vries, Lee, and Ashton (2008). In all of the three studies the psychometric results were very much in line with earlier findings with the English version (Lee & Ashton, 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2006). The internal consistency reliabilities of the HEXACO-PI(-R) factor scales ranged between 0.86 and 0.92 (median a = 0.90) and none of the correlations between the factor scales exceeded the 0.35 level (the median interscale correlation was 0.00 and the median absolute interscale correlation was 0.11). 2.2.2. SSS Sensation seeking was measured using the Dutch selection version of the Sensation Seeking Scale (Van den Berg & Feij, 2002;
538
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
Zuckerman, 1979), which consists of 52 items. The Sensation Seeking Scale consists of four subscales, Thrill and Adventure Seeking (13 items), Experience Seeking (11 items), Boredom Susceptibility (20 items), and Disinhibition (8 items), which are answered on 1–7 (disagree–agree) scales. In all three studies reported here, the internal consistency reliabilities of the SSS scales exceeded 0.80, except Experience Seeking (a’s between 0.71 and 0.74). The internal consistency reliability of the total Sensation Seeking Scale in the studies were 0.92 (Study 1), 0.93 (Study 2), and 0.91 (Study 3). 2.2.3. IPIP Risk-Taking The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) is a publicly available item pool of personality items. From this item pool, we selected and combined items from a Risk-Taking and Risk-Avoidance scale. The Risk-Taking scale consists of 10 items and is comparable to the scale with the same name in the Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised (JPI-R; Jackson, 1994). The Risk-Avoidance scale also consists of 10 items and is comparable to Tellegen’s Harm-Avoidance scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen, in press). Since the items from both scales exhibit considerable overlap, we decided to extract 12 items to measure Risk-Taking. The items were answered on a Likert 1–5 (disagree–agree) rating-scale. In both Studies 2 and 3 the internal consistency reliability of the IPIP Risk-Taking scale was 0.86. 2.3. Analyses Apart from correlational analyses, we used relative weight analyses to further explore the relations between the SSS and risk-taking and the HEXACO variables. Relative weight analysis (Johnson, 2000; LeBreton & Tonidandel, 2008) is used to determine the proportionate contribution (that is, percentage of explained variance) of each one of multiple independent variables in the explanation of a dependent variable. Especially when collinearity of independent variables is involved, relative weight analysis offers a more accurate estimation of the relative importance of each of the independent variables than standardized regression coefficients or semipartial correlations do (LeBreton & Tonidandel, 2008). There are three main steps to arrive at the relative weights of the independent variables. The first step is used to determine the loadings of k independent variables on k independent factors derived from these independent variables. In the second step, the dependent variable is regressed on the k independent factors. In the third step, for each of the independent variables all proportions of variance (i.e., the multiplication of squared loadings (k’s) and squared regression coefficients (b’s)) are summed to arrive at the relative weight of each of the independent variables in the explanation of the dependent variable (LeBreton & Tonidandel, 2008).
3. Results Table 1 contains the correlations of the HEXACO factor scales with sensation seeking and risk-taking scales in the three studies. Not reported are the correlations between SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking, which were substantial, respectively r = 0.74 (Study 2) and r = 0.70 (Study 3; both p’s < 0.001). The HEXACO factor scales explained on average 42% of the variance in the sensation seeking and risk-taking scales. Except for Agreeableness in Study 3, all of the relations between the HEXACO factor scales and the sensation seeking and risk-taking scales were significant. In all three studies, Openness to Experience was the most important correlate of the Sensation Seeking Scale, followed by Extraversion. In Studies 1 and 3, Honesty–Humility was the third most important correlate of the Sensation Seeking Scale, explaining respectively 14.6% and 17.4% of the total explained variance in the SSS. However, in Study 2, Conscientiousness and Emotionality explained more variance in the SSS than Honesty–Humility. The most important correlates of the IPIP Risk-Taking scale were Emotionality and Openness to Experience, followed by Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Honesty–Humility. Agreeableness was the weakest correlate of both the Sensation Seeking Scale and IPIP Risk-Taking. To further specify the results, we correlated the HEXACO factor scales and the HEXACO facet scales of Honesty–Humility and Emotionality with the Sensation Seeking facet scales Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS), Experience Seeking (ES), Boredom Susceptibility (BS), and Disinhibition (Dis). Remember that we expected Honesty–Humility to be especially related to Disinhibition and the Emotionality facet scale Fearfulness to be most strongly negatively related to the Sensation Seeking subscales. These expectations were borne out. In all three studies, all Honesty–Humility facet scales, and especially Fairness, were significantly and negatively related to Disinhibition. The Emotionality facet scale Fearfulness was strongly and negatively related to Thrill and Adventure Seeking in all three studies, but also shared significant correlations with the other Sensation Seeking subscales (Table 2). The analyses show that the different subscales of the SSS are differentially related to HEXACO factors and selected facets. In fact, the results seem to suggest that the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking are interstitial in the six-dimensional HEXACO personality space. To investigate the possibility that the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking are indeed interstitial, we checked whether it was possible to construct from the HEXACO facet scales a HEXACO Sensation Seeking Scale, characterized by a sufficiently strong correlation with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. In order to obtain such a HEXACO Sensation Seeking Scale, first of all we selected the strongest correlates of each of the four subscales of the SSS. Of all HEXACO facets, the strongest correlate of Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS) was the Emotionality facet Fearfulness, with correlations with TAS in the three studies ranging between 0.48 and 0.70 (mean
Table 1 Zero-order correlations and relative weights (rw’s) involving the HEXACO, sensation seeking and Risk-Taking scales in Study 1 (N = 304), Study 2 (N = 263), and Study 3 (N = 169). HEXACO
Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness to Experience R2/total rw (%) * **
p < 0.05. p < 0.01.
Study 1
Study 2
Sensation Seeking Scale
Sensation Seeking Scale
IPIP Risk-Taking
Study 3 Sensation Seeking Scale
IPIP Risk-Taking
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
0.33** 0.22** 0.40** 0.15** 0.27** 0.43** 0.40
14.6 6.6 25.2 2.7 13.9 36.9 100
0.25** 0.26** 0.33** 0.13* 0.24** 0.46** 0.39
7.7 12.2 19.7 4.3 13.4 42.6 100
0.29** 0.39** 0.26** 0.15* 0.27** 0.37** 0.40
10.7 31.4 11.3 5.2 16.0 25.3 100
0.35** 0.31** 0.36** 0.11 0.25** 0.52** 0.50
17.4 8.4 19.2 3.8 6.7 44.4 100
0.30** 0.45** 0.35** 0.11 0.32* 0.45** 0.41
15.3 24.6 19.3 4.5 14.7 21.7 100
539
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540 Table 2 Zero-order correlations of the sensation seeking subscales with HEXACO factor and selected facet scales in the three studies. Study 1
Study 2
Study 3
TAS
ES
BS
Dis
TAS
ES
BS
Dis
TAS
ES
BS
Dis
0.27** 0.28** 0.38** 0.06 0.17** 0.28**
0.18** 0.23** 0.16** 0.03 0.11 0.63**
0.23** 0.07 0.36** 0.19** 0.31** 0.31**
0.37** 0.08 0.29** 0.24** 0.24** 0.13*
0.22** 0.32** 0.30** 0.04 0.18** 0.31**
0.07 0.15* 0.16** 0.04 0.14* 0.56**
0.18** 0.20** 0.31** 0.18** 0.18** 0.35**
0.33** 0.04 0.21** 0.25** 0.30** 0.23**
0.18* 0.40** 0.34** 0.00 0.21** 0.31**
0.22** 0.32** 0.14 0.00 0.14 0.72**
0.24** 0.15* 0.27** 0.17* 0.19* 0.37**
0.41** 0.01 0.30** 0.19* 0.20* 0.20**
Honesty–Humility facet scales Sincerity 0.19** Fairness 0.34** Greed–avoidance 0.17** Modesty 0.15*
0.10* 0.23** 0.03 0.22**
0.08 0.28** 0.11 0.24**
0.29** 0.36** 0.28** 0.25**
0.10 0.13* 0.25** 0.16**
0.03 0.08 0.03 0.19**
0.03 0.14* 0.16* 0.26**
0.14* 0.30** 0.25** 0.29**
0.11 0.26** 0.06 0.09
0.06 0.36** 0.01 0.20**
0.17* 0.25** 0.11 0.17*
0.29** 0.35** 0.33** 0.24**
Emotionality facet scales Fearfulness Anxiety Dependence Sentimentality
0.35** 0.10 0.13* 0.09
0.28** 0.06 0.01 0.12*
0.35** 0.05 0.04 0.02
0.48** 0.18** 0.21** 0.12
0.29** 0.08 0.15* 0.04
0.25** 0.14* 0.16* 0.06
0.17** 0.01 0.01 0.01
0.70** 0.26** 0.10 0.06
0.51** 0.14 0.21** 0.03
0.30** 0.06 0.13 0.08
0.25** 0.11 0.00 0.16*
HEXACO factor scales Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness to Experience
0.57** 0.13* 0.08 0.04
Note: Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) scales are Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS), Experience Seeking (ES), Boredom Susceptibility (BS) and Disinhibition (Dis). * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.
r = 0.58). The strongest correlates of Experience Seeking (ES) were the Openness to Experience facets Unconventionality (mean r = 0.60) and Creativity (mean r = 0.59). The strongest correlates of Boredom Susceptibility (BS) were again the Openness to Experience facets Unconventionality (mean r = 0.38), Creativity (mean r = 0.45), but also the Extraversion facet Social Boldness (mean r = 0.31). Finally, Disinhibition (Dis) was most strongly related to the Honesty–Humility facet scale Fairness (mean r = 0.34), the Extraversion facet Sociability (mean r = 0.34), and the Conscientiousness facet Prudence (mean r = 0.30). Subsequently, we ran regressions using these facets with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking as dependent variables. In the final step, we simplified these two regression equations to the following formula:
HEXACO Sensation Seeking ¼ ½3 ð6 FearfulnessÞ þ 2 Unconventionality þ 2 Creativity þ 2 ð6 FairnessÞ þ 2 ð6 PrudenceÞ þ Social Boldness þ Sociability=13: HEXACO Sensation Seeking is correlated 0.73 (Study 1), 0.65 (Study 2), and 0.78 (Study 3) with the SSS and 0.68 (Study 2) and 0.76 (Study 3) with IPIP Risk-Taking. These correlations are all very strong, showing that sensation seeking and risk-taking may indeed be regarded as interstitial in the HEXACO personality space. Note that these results compare favorably to the results shown in Table 1; that is, HEXACO Sensation Seeking, based on the abovementioned facets, explains more variance in the SSS and in IPIP RiskTaking than the combined HEXACO factor scales do. 4. Discussion and conclusions There are four important findings in this study. In the first place, except for Agreeableness, the HEXACO factor scales seem to explain a substantial amount of variance in sensation seeking and risk-taking. Secondly, Honesty–Humility seems to be an important addition to personality models in the explanation of sensation seeking and risk-taking, especially through its relation with Disinhibition. Thirdly, in contrast with Neuroticism, which has been found to be unrelated to sensation seeking, Emotionality is strongly related to sensation seeking through its facet Fearfulness. And fourthly, this research shows that it is possible to construct a sensation seeking scale based on the facets of the HEXACO-PI,
which shows very strong convergent correlations with the SSS and with IPIP risk-taking. With respect to the first point, some scholars (Paunonen, Haddock, Forsterling, & Keinonen, 2003; Paunonen & Jackson, 2000) have argued that risk-taking should be considered beyond the traditional Big Five domain. Even when Honesty–Humility is not taken into account, this seems not to be the case. In all studies, the HEXACO scales minus Honesty–Humility explained more than 35% of the variance in sensation seeking and risk-taking, which is more than the 20% explained variance (multiple R of 0.45) proposed by Paunonen and Jackson (2000) as a cutoff criterion to decide whether a construct is beyond the Big Five or not. Consequently, sensation seeking and risk-taking seem to fall within the boundaries of the ‘measurable’ space of personality, and appear to be interstitial, characterized by high Openness to Experience, high Extraversion, low Emotionality, low Honesty–Humility, and low Conscientiousness. With respect to the second point, of special interest is the relation between Disinhibition and Honesty–Humility. In both Angleitner and Ostendorf’s (1994) and Zuckerman et al.’s (1993) studies, Disinhibition showed strong negative relations with FFM Agreeableness. The discrepancy between these studies and the weak findings with HEXACO Agreeableness can be resolved when Honesty–Humility is taken into account. Using the HEXACOPI(-R), lower correlations with Agreeableness are compensated by relatively higher correlations with Honesty–Humility. These contrasting findings can be explained by noting that FFM Agreeableness shares some variance with Honesty–Humility (Ashton & Lee, 2005), and that it is this shared variance that explains the relations of both FFM Agreeableness and HEXACO Honesty–Humility with Disinhibition. The correlation between Disinhibition and Honesty–Humility seems to be due to the lack of impulse control in Disinhibition. Disinhibited behaviors are characterized by a disregard of the effects the impulsive acts have on other people or society as a whole, resulting in behaviors which may be characterized as ‘unfair’ by others. More generally, note that there might be some risk involved in low Honesty–Humility behaviors, i.e., there is always a chance to get caught, exposed, and punished when societal integrity norms are violated. Future research might like to further investigate the relation between Honesty–Humility and sensation seeking by for instance investigating the genetic, biopsychological, or psychophysiological roots of this relation.
540
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
With respect to the third point, in previous studies Neuroticism was found to be unrelated to sensation seeking (Aluja, García, & García, 2003; Dahlen & White, 2006; Zuckerman et al., 1993). However, this lack of relation may have masked a negative relation of Neuroticism with Thrill and Adventure Seeking and a positive relation with Disinhibition, as has for instance been established in Zuckerman et al.’s (1993) study. FFM Neuroticism may be negatively related to SSS Thrill and Adventure Seeking through its Fearfulness component, but positively related to SSS Disinhibition through its angry–hostility component. This contrast is resolved in the HEXACO model, in which Fearfulness is associated with Emotionality and angry–hostility is associated with Agreeableness. In all three studies, negative relations are observed between HEXACO Emotionality and the SSS, which is mainly due to the strong negative relations of the Fearfulness facet with SSS Thrill and Adventure Seeking. However, although the findings with Agreeableness are in the expected direction, they are less strong. Still, the results lend credence to the position that Emotionality and Agreeableness in the HEXACO model are rotational variants of FFM Neuroticism and Agreeableness (Ashton et al., 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2004). Finally, with respect to the fourth point, in assessment and diagnostic situations, practicing psychologists may be interested in obtaining sensation seeking or risk-taking scores based on general personality instruments, either to complement their findings with another sensation seeking or risk-taking instrument, or to substitute for them. This study shows that it is possible to construct a sensation seeking scale from the HEXACO facet scales which shows strong convergent correlations with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. This scale has stronger relations with sensation seeking and risk-taking than the combined HEXACO factor scales, and may thus be very useful in assessment situations when other sensation seeking or risk-taking scales are unavailable. To conclude, this study elucidates on the nature of both the HEXACO model and sensation seeking and risk-taking, by showing that sensation seeking and risk-taking are firmly rooted in the sixdimensional framework of the HEXACO model. The research not only shows that Honesty–Humility is an important addition through its relation with Disinhibition of the SSS, but also that Emotionality has strong relations with sensation seeking through its Fearfulness component. Finally, for practicing psychologists, the HEXACO facets Fearfulness, Unconventionality, Creativity, Social Boldness, Sociability, Fairness, and Prudence can be used to construct a sensation seeking scale, which has strong convergent correlations with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. Acknowledgement Grateful acknowledgement is provided to Michael C. Ashton and Kibeom Lee for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and to Annebel de Hoogh, Ed Caffin and Marleen Haentjensvan Meeteren for their help in data collection and entry. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Reinout E. de Vries, Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, e-mail: [email protected]. References Aluja, A., García, Ó., & García, L. F. (2003). Relationships among extraversion, openness to experience, and sensation seeking. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 671–680. Andrucci, G. L., Archer, R. P., Pancoast, D. L., & Gordon, R. A. (1989). The relationship of MMPI and sensation seeking scales to adolescent drug use. Journal of Personality Assessment, 53, 253–266. Angleitner, A., & Ostendorf, F. (1994). Temperament and the Big Five factors of personality. In C. F. Halverson, G. A. Kohnstamm, & R. P. Martin (Eds.), The
developing structure of temperament and personality from infancy to adulthood. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Arnaut, G. L. Y. (2006). Sensation seeking, risk taking, and fearlessness. In J. C. Thomas & D. L. Segal (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of personality and psychopathology. Personality and everyday functioning (Vol. 1, pp. 322–341). NJ, US: John Wiley and Sons Inc. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2005). Honesty–Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model. Journal of Personality, 73, 1321–1353. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2008). The prediction of Honesty–Humility-related criteria by the HEXACO and Five-Factor models of personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1216–1228. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P., de Vries, R. E., Di Blas, L., et al. (2004). A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: Solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 356–366. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 653–665. Dahlen, E. R., & White, R. P. (2006). The Big Five factors, sensation seeking, and driving anger in the prediction of unsafe driving. Personality and Individual Differences, 41, 903–915. De Vries, R. E., Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2008). The Dutch HEXACO Personality Inventory: Psychometric properties, self-other agreement, and relations with psychopathy among low and high acquaintanceship dyads. Journal of Personality Assessment, 90, 142–151. Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several Five-Factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (pp. 7–28). Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press. Herrero, Ó., & Colom, R. (2008). Distinguishing impulsive, unsocialized sensation seeking: A comparison between criminal offenders and the general population. Journal of Individual Differences, 29, 199–204. Jackson, D. N. (1994). Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised manual. Port Huron, MI: Sigma Assessment Systems. Johnson, J. W. (2000). A heuristic method for estimating the relative weight of predictor variables in multiple regression. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 35, 1–19. Joireman, J., Anderson, J., & Strathman, A. (2003). The aggression paradox: Understanding links among aggression, sensation seeking, and the consideration of future consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1287–1302. Jonah, B. A., Thiessen, R., & Au Yeung, E. (2001). Sensation seeking, risky driving and behavioral adaptation. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 33, 679–684. LeBreton, J. M., & Tonidandel, S. (2008). Multivariate relative importance. Extending relative weight analysis to multivariate criterion spaces. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 329–345. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39, 329–358. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2006). Further assessment of the HEXACO Personality Inventory: Two new facet scales and an observer report form. Psychological Assessment, 18, 182–191. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2008). The HEXACO personality factors in the indigenous personality lexicons of English and 11 other languages. Journal of Personality, 76, 1001–1053. Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., & de Vries, R. E. (2005). Predicting workplace delinquency and integrity with the HEXACO and Five-Factor models of personality structure. Human Performance, 18, 179–197. Paunonen, S. V., Haddock, G., Forsterling, F., & Keinonen, M. (2003). Broad versus narrow personality measures and the prediction of behaviour across cultures. European Journal of Personality, 17, 413–433. Paunonen, S. V., & Jackson, D. N. (2000). What is beyond the Big Five? Plenty! Journal of Personality, 68, 821–835. Tellegen, A. (in press). MPQ (Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire): Manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Van den Berg, P. T., & Feij, J. A. (2002). SpanningsBehoefteLijst – Selectieversie: Handleiding [Sensation Seeking Scale – Selection version: Manual]. Leiden: Psychologische Instrumenten Tests Services. Wittmann, M., Arce, E., & Santisteban, C. (2008). How impulsiveness, trait anger, and extracurricular activities might affect aggression in school children. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 618–623. Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of arousal. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zuckerman, M. (2007). Sensation seeking and risky behavior. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Zuckerman, M. (2008). Personality and sensation seeking. In G. J. Boyle, G. Matthews & D. H. Saklofske (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of personality theory and assessment. Vol. 1: Personality theories and models (pp. 379–398). Los Angeles: SAGE. Zuckerman, M., Kuhlman, D. M., Joireman, J., Teta, P., & Kraft, M. (1993). A comparison of three structural models for personality: The Big Three, the Big Five, and the alternative five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 757–768.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Sensation seeking, risk-taking, and the HEXACO model of personality Reinout E. de Vries *, Anita de Vries, Jan A. Feij VU University Amsterdam, Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 28 January 2009 Received in revised form 28 April 2009 Accepted 26 May 2009 Available online 23 June 2009 Keywords: HEXACO Sensation seeking Risk-taking
a b s t r a c t Previous research has related sensation seeking and risk-taking to the Big Five or Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality. Recently, based on a reanalysis of the main lexical studies, a six-dimensional HEXACO model of personality has been proposed. In three studies, the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and the IPIP Risk-Taking scale are related to the factor and selected facet scales of the (Revised) HEXACO Personality Inventory. In agreement with the FFM, sensation seeking and risk-taking are significantly related to Openness to Experience, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. However, sensation seeking and risk-taking are also significantly related to HEXACO Honesty–Humility and Emotionality. Based on the findings, a HEXACO Sensation Seeking Scale is designed from the facets Fearfulness, Unconventionality, Creativity, Fairness, Prudence, Social Boldness, and Sociability, which is found to have strong convergent correlations with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking in all of the studies. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Sensation seeking and risk-taking have been associated with a plethora of important behaviors and outcomes in daily life. For instance, sensation seeking has been found to be an important correlate of a range of high-risk behaviors, such as drinking, smoking, drug use, and risky sexual behaviors (Zuckerman, 2008). Although some have argued that sensation seeking and risk-taking constitute an important personality dimension on their own (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993) or lie beyond the Big Five (Paunonen & Jackson, 2000), others have argued that they share a substantial amount of variance with Big Five or Five Factor Model (FFM) measures (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The latter stance seems to receive most support. Various studies have shown that, in terms of the Five Factor Model, sensation seeking and risk-taking share a substantial amount of variance with Openness to Experience and Extraversion, and to a lesser degree with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, while Neuroticism or Emotional Stability has been found to share almost no variance with sensation seeking or risk-taking (Aluja, García, & García, 2003; Dahlen & White, 2006; Zuckerman et al., 1993). When rephrased in terms of the Big Five, compared to people low on sensation seeking, people high on sensation seeking seem to be characterized by a higher level of Openness to Experience and Extraversion and a somewhat lower level of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, but no differences in Emotional Stability or Neuroticism. Recently, a new structural model of personality has been proposed that posits six instead of five main dimensions of personality. This model, the HEXACO model of personality, is based on the same * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 20 5988718. E-mail address: [email protected] (Reinout E. de Vries). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.05.029
lexical studies that have given rise to the Big Five model (Ashton et al., 2004). The HEXACO acronym stands for the following six dimensions, Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Compared to the Big Five, some similarities and changes can be observed in the HEXACO model. The HEXACO model is similar to the Big Five model with respect to the three dimensions Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. The most important change is the addition of a new personality dimension, Honesty–Humility, which represents individual differences in tendencies to be sincere, fair, and unassuming versus manipulative, greedy, and pretentious. The second most important change is the rotation of the Big Five dimensions Agreeableness and Emotional Stability. In the HEXACO model, variance associated with irritability, which in the Big Five model is associated with low Emotional Stability, is assigned to HEXACO Agreeableness instead. As a consequence, HEXACO Agreeableness represents individual differences in tendencies to be cooperative, patient, and lenient versus to be critical, irritable, and unforgiving towards others. Variance associated with sentimentality, which in the Big Five model is associated with Agreeableness, is assigned to HEXACO Emotionality instead. As a consequence, HEXACO Emotionality represents individual differences in the experience of anxiety, sentimentality, and empathy versus fearlessness, detachment, and independence. Evidence thus far shows that the HEXACO model is a robust model, with high levels of cross-cultural correspondence of the six lexical dimensions in 12 languages with the six HEXACO dimensions (Lee & Ashton, 2008) and significant and meaningful incremental validity of Honesty– Humility in the prediction of integrity-related criteria over and above Five Factor Model measures (Ashton & Lee, 2008). The abovementioned changes may have some implications for the ability to explain variance in sensation seeking or risk-taking.
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
Compared to the Big Five model, no big differences are likely to be observed in the relations between sensation seeking or risk-taking and Openness to Experience, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, because these three dimensions show a strong overlap with the Big Five dimensions. However, compared to the Big Five model, there may be some changes in the relations with sensation seeking or risk-taking due to the different rotational positions of Agreeableness and Emotionality, and due to the addition of Honesty–Humility in the HEXACO model of personality. First of all, the different rotational position of HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality may have some implications for the relations of these dimensions with sensation seeking and risk-taking. Sensation seeking and risk-taking have been associated with impulsiveness and fearlessness (Arnaut, 2006). In the FFM or Big Five model, Neuroticism (or low Emotional Stability) pertains to a mix of irritability (i.e., low patience) and Fearfulness. Interestingly enough, this mix may counteract the possibility to find significant relations between Neuroticism and sensation seeking or risk-taking because Neuroticism may be positively associated with sensation seeking through its irritability or lack of impulsivity component while it is at the same time negatively associated with sensation seeking through its Fearfulness component. In the HEXACO model, as explained above, these two components are aligned with two different dimensions. HEXACO Agreeableness contains the lack of irritability (patience) component which may be negatively associated with sensation seeking (i.e., disagreeableness or impatience may be positively associated with sensation seeking), while HEXACO Emotionality contains the Fearfulness component, which may create a negative association with sensation seeking or risktaking. Secondly, the addition of Honesty–Humility may offer incremental variance in the prediction of sensation seeking or risk-taking. Sensation seeking has been found to distinguish criminal offenders from the general population (Herrero & Colom, 2008) and to be related to a general deviance factor, which includes law abidance, sexual risks, and drug use (Zuckerman, 2007). Of the subscales of the Sensation Seeking Scale, Disinhibition has been noted as one of the most important components in the explanation of counternormative behaviors. Jonah, Thiessen, and Au Yeung (2001) found Disinhibition to be most strongly related to violations of traffic norms and rules. Disinhibition has also been found to be one of the most important sensation seeking predictors of illegal drug use (Andrucci, Archer, Pancoast, & Gordon, 1989). Disinhibition and the related construct Impulsiveness have been found to be related to verbal and physical aggression in school children (Joireman, Anderson, & Strathman, 2003; Wittmann, Arce, & Santisteban, 2008). All of these counternormative activities involve rule-breaking behaviors and violations of societal norms, which may indicate that Honesty–Humility, which has been negatively associated with antisocial and counterproductive behaviors (Lee, Ashton, & de Vries, 2005), is involved. To sum up, this study will investigate the relations of the HEXACO model of personality with sensation seeking and risk-taking. We are specifically interested in the relations between HEXACO Emotionality and Honesty–Humility with sensation seeking, its subscales, and risk-taking. To investigate these relations, we have conducted three comparable studies. In the first study, which was conducted in a student sample, the HEXACO-PI (Lee & Ashton, 2004) was investigated together with the Dutch version of the Sensation Seeking Scale of Zuckerman (Van den Berg & Feij, 2002; Zuckerman, 1979). In the second study, conducted in a community sample, we administered the HEXACO-PI together with the Sensation Seeking Scale and the IPIP Risk-Taking scale (Goldberg, 1999; Jackson, 1994). In the third study, we employed the Revised HEXACO-PI (HEXACO-PI-R) together with the Sensation Seeking Scale and IPIP Risk-Taking.
537
2. Method 2.1. Samples and procedures 2.1.1. Study 1 Undergraduate psychology and educational science students filled out the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and, a week later, the HEXACO-PI. A paper-and-pencil version of the SSS was returned by 339 students. One week later, 349 respondents completed the HEXACO-PI through the internet. The questionnaires were matched on student numbers. A total of 304 matched students (82.9% women), with a mean age of 20.6 years (sd = 3.4), filled out both questionnaires. 2.1.2. Study 2 Community respondents were recruited through the internet in return for the possibility to obtain a personality profile and the chance to win a gift voucher. Respondents willing to participate were provided with two internet links. The first one linked to the HEXACO-PI and background variables and the second one, which they received a week after the first one, linked to the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. The sample consisted of 276 participants, of whom 263 (60.8% female) filled out all questionnaires. The mean age of the final usable sample was 38.3 years (sd = 12.1) and consisted of respondents with the following educational levels: 0.8% junior high school, 7.2% high school, 8.4% lower-level occupational training, 34.2% middle-level occupational training, 32.3% higher-level occupational training, and 17.1% University. 2.1.3. Study 3 As in Study 1, the sample consisted of first-year psychology and educational science students. A total of 169 students (85.2% women), with a mean age of 20.1 (sd = 2.3), filled out the HEXACOPI-R, the SSS, and the IPIP Risk-Taking scale. 2.2. Instruments 2.2.1. HEXACO-PI and HEXACO-PI-R The HEXACO Personality Inventory is a questionnaire operationalization of the HEXACO six-dimensional personality model (Lee & Ashton, 2004). The HEXACO-PI, which was used in the first two studies, consists of 208 items, divided among four facets for each of the six main scales, plus two additional facets, Altruism and Negative Self-Evaluation (Lee & Ashton, 2006). These two additional facets measure so-called ‘interstitial’ regions in the HEXACO model, that is, they pertain to blends of two or more factors in the six-dimensional personality space. The HEXACO-PI-R, which was used in the third study, consists of 200 items and deviates from the HEXACO-PI in the replacement of the Extraversion Expressiveness facet by the facet Social Self-Esteem and by the removal of the interstitial Negative Self-Evaluation facet. All items in both questionnaires were rated on 1–5 (disagree–agree) scales. The psychometric properties of the Dutch HEXACO-PI scales are reported in De Vries, Lee, and Ashton (2008). In all of the three studies the psychometric results were very much in line with earlier findings with the English version (Lee & Ashton, 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2006). The internal consistency reliabilities of the HEXACO-PI(-R) factor scales ranged between 0.86 and 0.92 (median a = 0.90) and none of the correlations between the factor scales exceeded the 0.35 level (the median interscale correlation was 0.00 and the median absolute interscale correlation was 0.11). 2.2.2. SSS Sensation seeking was measured using the Dutch selection version of the Sensation Seeking Scale (Van den Berg & Feij, 2002;
538
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
Zuckerman, 1979), which consists of 52 items. The Sensation Seeking Scale consists of four subscales, Thrill and Adventure Seeking (13 items), Experience Seeking (11 items), Boredom Susceptibility (20 items), and Disinhibition (8 items), which are answered on 1–7 (disagree–agree) scales. In all three studies reported here, the internal consistency reliabilities of the SSS scales exceeded 0.80, except Experience Seeking (a’s between 0.71 and 0.74). The internal consistency reliability of the total Sensation Seeking Scale in the studies were 0.92 (Study 1), 0.93 (Study 2), and 0.91 (Study 3). 2.2.3. IPIP Risk-Taking The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) is a publicly available item pool of personality items. From this item pool, we selected and combined items from a Risk-Taking and Risk-Avoidance scale. The Risk-Taking scale consists of 10 items and is comparable to the scale with the same name in the Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised (JPI-R; Jackson, 1994). The Risk-Avoidance scale also consists of 10 items and is comparable to Tellegen’s Harm-Avoidance scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen, in press). Since the items from both scales exhibit considerable overlap, we decided to extract 12 items to measure Risk-Taking. The items were answered on a Likert 1–5 (disagree–agree) rating-scale. In both Studies 2 and 3 the internal consistency reliability of the IPIP Risk-Taking scale was 0.86. 2.3. Analyses Apart from correlational analyses, we used relative weight analyses to further explore the relations between the SSS and risk-taking and the HEXACO variables. Relative weight analysis (Johnson, 2000; LeBreton & Tonidandel, 2008) is used to determine the proportionate contribution (that is, percentage of explained variance) of each one of multiple independent variables in the explanation of a dependent variable. Especially when collinearity of independent variables is involved, relative weight analysis offers a more accurate estimation of the relative importance of each of the independent variables than standardized regression coefficients or semipartial correlations do (LeBreton & Tonidandel, 2008). There are three main steps to arrive at the relative weights of the independent variables. The first step is used to determine the loadings of k independent variables on k independent factors derived from these independent variables. In the second step, the dependent variable is regressed on the k independent factors. In the third step, for each of the independent variables all proportions of variance (i.e., the multiplication of squared loadings (k’s) and squared regression coefficients (b’s)) are summed to arrive at the relative weight of each of the independent variables in the explanation of the dependent variable (LeBreton & Tonidandel, 2008).
3. Results Table 1 contains the correlations of the HEXACO factor scales with sensation seeking and risk-taking scales in the three studies. Not reported are the correlations between SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking, which were substantial, respectively r = 0.74 (Study 2) and r = 0.70 (Study 3; both p’s < 0.001). The HEXACO factor scales explained on average 42% of the variance in the sensation seeking and risk-taking scales. Except for Agreeableness in Study 3, all of the relations between the HEXACO factor scales and the sensation seeking and risk-taking scales were significant. In all three studies, Openness to Experience was the most important correlate of the Sensation Seeking Scale, followed by Extraversion. In Studies 1 and 3, Honesty–Humility was the third most important correlate of the Sensation Seeking Scale, explaining respectively 14.6% and 17.4% of the total explained variance in the SSS. However, in Study 2, Conscientiousness and Emotionality explained more variance in the SSS than Honesty–Humility. The most important correlates of the IPIP Risk-Taking scale were Emotionality and Openness to Experience, followed by Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Honesty–Humility. Agreeableness was the weakest correlate of both the Sensation Seeking Scale and IPIP Risk-Taking. To further specify the results, we correlated the HEXACO factor scales and the HEXACO facet scales of Honesty–Humility and Emotionality with the Sensation Seeking facet scales Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS), Experience Seeking (ES), Boredom Susceptibility (BS), and Disinhibition (Dis). Remember that we expected Honesty–Humility to be especially related to Disinhibition and the Emotionality facet scale Fearfulness to be most strongly negatively related to the Sensation Seeking subscales. These expectations were borne out. In all three studies, all Honesty–Humility facet scales, and especially Fairness, were significantly and negatively related to Disinhibition. The Emotionality facet scale Fearfulness was strongly and negatively related to Thrill and Adventure Seeking in all three studies, but also shared significant correlations with the other Sensation Seeking subscales (Table 2). The analyses show that the different subscales of the SSS are differentially related to HEXACO factors and selected facets. In fact, the results seem to suggest that the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking are interstitial in the six-dimensional HEXACO personality space. To investigate the possibility that the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking are indeed interstitial, we checked whether it was possible to construct from the HEXACO facet scales a HEXACO Sensation Seeking Scale, characterized by a sufficiently strong correlation with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. In order to obtain such a HEXACO Sensation Seeking Scale, first of all we selected the strongest correlates of each of the four subscales of the SSS. Of all HEXACO facets, the strongest correlate of Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS) was the Emotionality facet Fearfulness, with correlations with TAS in the three studies ranging between 0.48 and 0.70 (mean
Table 1 Zero-order correlations and relative weights (rw’s) involving the HEXACO, sensation seeking and Risk-Taking scales in Study 1 (N = 304), Study 2 (N = 263), and Study 3 (N = 169). HEXACO
Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness to Experience R2/total rw (%) * **
p < 0.05. p < 0.01.
Study 1
Study 2
Sensation Seeking Scale
Sensation Seeking Scale
IPIP Risk-Taking
Study 3 Sensation Seeking Scale
IPIP Risk-Taking
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
Zero-order r
rw (%)
0.33** 0.22** 0.40** 0.15** 0.27** 0.43** 0.40
14.6 6.6 25.2 2.7 13.9 36.9 100
0.25** 0.26** 0.33** 0.13* 0.24** 0.46** 0.39
7.7 12.2 19.7 4.3 13.4 42.6 100
0.29** 0.39** 0.26** 0.15* 0.27** 0.37** 0.40
10.7 31.4 11.3 5.2 16.0 25.3 100
0.35** 0.31** 0.36** 0.11 0.25** 0.52** 0.50
17.4 8.4 19.2 3.8 6.7 44.4 100
0.30** 0.45** 0.35** 0.11 0.32* 0.45** 0.41
15.3 24.6 19.3 4.5 14.7 21.7 100
539
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540 Table 2 Zero-order correlations of the sensation seeking subscales with HEXACO factor and selected facet scales in the three studies. Study 1
Study 2
Study 3
TAS
ES
BS
Dis
TAS
ES
BS
Dis
TAS
ES
BS
Dis
0.27** 0.28** 0.38** 0.06 0.17** 0.28**
0.18** 0.23** 0.16** 0.03 0.11 0.63**
0.23** 0.07 0.36** 0.19** 0.31** 0.31**
0.37** 0.08 0.29** 0.24** 0.24** 0.13*
0.22** 0.32** 0.30** 0.04 0.18** 0.31**
0.07 0.15* 0.16** 0.04 0.14* 0.56**
0.18** 0.20** 0.31** 0.18** 0.18** 0.35**
0.33** 0.04 0.21** 0.25** 0.30** 0.23**
0.18* 0.40** 0.34** 0.00 0.21** 0.31**
0.22** 0.32** 0.14 0.00 0.14 0.72**
0.24** 0.15* 0.27** 0.17* 0.19* 0.37**
0.41** 0.01 0.30** 0.19* 0.20* 0.20**
Honesty–Humility facet scales Sincerity 0.19** Fairness 0.34** Greed–avoidance 0.17** Modesty 0.15*
0.10* 0.23** 0.03 0.22**
0.08 0.28** 0.11 0.24**
0.29** 0.36** 0.28** 0.25**
0.10 0.13* 0.25** 0.16**
0.03 0.08 0.03 0.19**
0.03 0.14* 0.16* 0.26**
0.14* 0.30** 0.25** 0.29**
0.11 0.26** 0.06 0.09
0.06 0.36** 0.01 0.20**
0.17* 0.25** 0.11 0.17*
0.29** 0.35** 0.33** 0.24**
Emotionality facet scales Fearfulness Anxiety Dependence Sentimentality
0.35** 0.10 0.13* 0.09
0.28** 0.06 0.01 0.12*
0.35** 0.05 0.04 0.02
0.48** 0.18** 0.21** 0.12
0.29** 0.08 0.15* 0.04
0.25** 0.14* 0.16* 0.06
0.17** 0.01 0.01 0.01
0.70** 0.26** 0.10 0.06
0.51** 0.14 0.21** 0.03
0.30** 0.06 0.13 0.08
0.25** 0.11 0.00 0.16*
HEXACO factor scales Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness to Experience
0.57** 0.13* 0.08 0.04
Note: Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) scales are Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS), Experience Seeking (ES), Boredom Susceptibility (BS) and Disinhibition (Dis). * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.
r = 0.58). The strongest correlates of Experience Seeking (ES) were the Openness to Experience facets Unconventionality (mean r = 0.60) and Creativity (mean r = 0.59). The strongest correlates of Boredom Susceptibility (BS) were again the Openness to Experience facets Unconventionality (mean r = 0.38), Creativity (mean r = 0.45), but also the Extraversion facet Social Boldness (mean r = 0.31). Finally, Disinhibition (Dis) was most strongly related to the Honesty–Humility facet scale Fairness (mean r = 0.34), the Extraversion facet Sociability (mean r = 0.34), and the Conscientiousness facet Prudence (mean r = 0.30). Subsequently, we ran regressions using these facets with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking as dependent variables. In the final step, we simplified these two regression equations to the following formula:
HEXACO Sensation Seeking ¼ ½3 ð6 FearfulnessÞ þ 2 Unconventionality þ 2 Creativity þ 2 ð6 FairnessÞ þ 2 ð6 PrudenceÞ þ Social Boldness þ Sociability=13: HEXACO Sensation Seeking is correlated 0.73 (Study 1), 0.65 (Study 2), and 0.78 (Study 3) with the SSS and 0.68 (Study 2) and 0.76 (Study 3) with IPIP Risk-Taking. These correlations are all very strong, showing that sensation seeking and risk-taking may indeed be regarded as interstitial in the HEXACO personality space. Note that these results compare favorably to the results shown in Table 1; that is, HEXACO Sensation Seeking, based on the abovementioned facets, explains more variance in the SSS and in IPIP RiskTaking than the combined HEXACO factor scales do. 4. Discussion and conclusions There are four important findings in this study. In the first place, except for Agreeableness, the HEXACO factor scales seem to explain a substantial amount of variance in sensation seeking and risk-taking. Secondly, Honesty–Humility seems to be an important addition to personality models in the explanation of sensation seeking and risk-taking, especially through its relation with Disinhibition. Thirdly, in contrast with Neuroticism, which has been found to be unrelated to sensation seeking, Emotionality is strongly related to sensation seeking through its facet Fearfulness. And fourthly, this research shows that it is possible to construct a sensation seeking scale based on the facets of the HEXACO-PI,
which shows very strong convergent correlations with the SSS and with IPIP risk-taking. With respect to the first point, some scholars (Paunonen, Haddock, Forsterling, & Keinonen, 2003; Paunonen & Jackson, 2000) have argued that risk-taking should be considered beyond the traditional Big Five domain. Even when Honesty–Humility is not taken into account, this seems not to be the case. In all studies, the HEXACO scales minus Honesty–Humility explained more than 35% of the variance in sensation seeking and risk-taking, which is more than the 20% explained variance (multiple R of 0.45) proposed by Paunonen and Jackson (2000) as a cutoff criterion to decide whether a construct is beyond the Big Five or not. Consequently, sensation seeking and risk-taking seem to fall within the boundaries of the ‘measurable’ space of personality, and appear to be interstitial, characterized by high Openness to Experience, high Extraversion, low Emotionality, low Honesty–Humility, and low Conscientiousness. With respect to the second point, of special interest is the relation between Disinhibition and Honesty–Humility. In both Angleitner and Ostendorf’s (1994) and Zuckerman et al.’s (1993) studies, Disinhibition showed strong negative relations with FFM Agreeableness. The discrepancy between these studies and the weak findings with HEXACO Agreeableness can be resolved when Honesty–Humility is taken into account. Using the HEXACOPI(-R), lower correlations with Agreeableness are compensated by relatively higher correlations with Honesty–Humility. These contrasting findings can be explained by noting that FFM Agreeableness shares some variance with Honesty–Humility (Ashton & Lee, 2005), and that it is this shared variance that explains the relations of both FFM Agreeableness and HEXACO Honesty–Humility with Disinhibition. The correlation between Disinhibition and Honesty–Humility seems to be due to the lack of impulse control in Disinhibition. Disinhibited behaviors are characterized by a disregard of the effects the impulsive acts have on other people or society as a whole, resulting in behaviors which may be characterized as ‘unfair’ by others. More generally, note that there might be some risk involved in low Honesty–Humility behaviors, i.e., there is always a chance to get caught, exposed, and punished when societal integrity norms are violated. Future research might like to further investigate the relation between Honesty–Humility and sensation seeking by for instance investigating the genetic, biopsychological, or psychophysiological roots of this relation.
540
Reinout E. de Vries et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 536–540
With respect to the third point, in previous studies Neuroticism was found to be unrelated to sensation seeking (Aluja, García, & García, 2003; Dahlen & White, 2006; Zuckerman et al., 1993). However, this lack of relation may have masked a negative relation of Neuroticism with Thrill and Adventure Seeking and a positive relation with Disinhibition, as has for instance been established in Zuckerman et al.’s (1993) study. FFM Neuroticism may be negatively related to SSS Thrill and Adventure Seeking through its Fearfulness component, but positively related to SSS Disinhibition through its angry–hostility component. This contrast is resolved in the HEXACO model, in which Fearfulness is associated with Emotionality and angry–hostility is associated with Agreeableness. In all three studies, negative relations are observed between HEXACO Emotionality and the SSS, which is mainly due to the strong negative relations of the Fearfulness facet with SSS Thrill and Adventure Seeking. However, although the findings with Agreeableness are in the expected direction, they are less strong. Still, the results lend credence to the position that Emotionality and Agreeableness in the HEXACO model are rotational variants of FFM Neuroticism and Agreeableness (Ashton et al., 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2004). Finally, with respect to the fourth point, in assessment and diagnostic situations, practicing psychologists may be interested in obtaining sensation seeking or risk-taking scores based on general personality instruments, either to complement their findings with another sensation seeking or risk-taking instrument, or to substitute for them. This study shows that it is possible to construct a sensation seeking scale from the HEXACO facet scales which shows strong convergent correlations with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. This scale has stronger relations with sensation seeking and risk-taking than the combined HEXACO factor scales, and may thus be very useful in assessment situations when other sensation seeking or risk-taking scales are unavailable. To conclude, this study elucidates on the nature of both the HEXACO model and sensation seeking and risk-taking, by showing that sensation seeking and risk-taking are firmly rooted in the sixdimensional framework of the HEXACO model. The research not only shows that Honesty–Humility is an important addition through its relation with Disinhibition of the SSS, but also that Emotionality has strong relations with sensation seeking through its Fearfulness component. Finally, for practicing psychologists, the HEXACO facets Fearfulness, Unconventionality, Creativity, Social Boldness, Sociability, Fairness, and Prudence can be used to construct a sensation seeking scale, which has strong convergent correlations with the SSS and IPIP Risk-Taking. Acknowledgement Grateful acknowledgement is provided to Michael C. Ashton and Kibeom Lee for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and to Annebel de Hoogh, Ed Caffin and Marleen Haentjensvan Meeteren for their help in data collection and entry. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Reinout E. de Vries, Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, e-mail: [email protected]. References Aluja, A., García, Ó., & García, L. F. (2003). Relationships among extraversion, openness to experience, and sensation seeking. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 671–680. Andrucci, G. L., Archer, R. P., Pancoast, D. L., & Gordon, R. A. (1989). The relationship of MMPI and sensation seeking scales to adolescent drug use. Journal of Personality Assessment, 53, 253–266. Angleitner, A., & Ostendorf, F. (1994). Temperament and the Big Five factors of personality. In C. F. Halverson, G. A. Kohnstamm, & R. P. Martin (Eds.), The
developing structure of temperament and personality from infancy to adulthood. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Arnaut, G. L. Y. (2006). Sensation seeking, risk taking, and fearlessness. In J. C. Thomas & D. L. Segal (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of personality and psychopathology. Personality and everyday functioning (Vol. 1, pp. 322–341). NJ, US: John Wiley and Sons Inc. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2005). Honesty–Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model. Journal of Personality, 73, 1321–1353. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2008). The prediction of Honesty–Humility-related criteria by the HEXACO and Five-Factor models of personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1216–1228. Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P., de Vries, R. E., Di Blas, L., et al. (2004). A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: Solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 356–366. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 653–665. Dahlen, E. R., & White, R. P. (2006). The Big Five factors, sensation seeking, and driving anger in the prediction of unsafe driving. Personality and Individual Differences, 41, 903–915. De Vries, R. E., Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2008). The Dutch HEXACO Personality Inventory: Psychometric properties, self-other agreement, and relations with psychopathy among low and high acquaintanceship dyads. Journal of Personality Assessment, 90, 142–151. Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several Five-Factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (pp. 7–28). Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press. Herrero, Ó., & Colom, R. (2008). Distinguishing impulsive, unsocialized sensation seeking: A comparison between criminal offenders and the general population. Journal of Individual Differences, 29, 199–204. Jackson, D. N. (1994). Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised manual. Port Huron, MI: Sigma Assessment Systems. Johnson, J. W. (2000). A heuristic method for estimating the relative weight of predictor variables in multiple regression. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 35, 1–19. Joireman, J., Anderson, J., & Strathman, A. (2003). The aggression paradox: Understanding links among aggression, sensation seeking, and the consideration of future consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1287–1302. Jonah, B. A., Thiessen, R., & Au Yeung, E. (2001). Sensation seeking, risky driving and behavioral adaptation. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 33, 679–684. LeBreton, J. M., & Tonidandel, S. (2008). Multivariate relative importance. Extending relative weight analysis to multivariate criterion spaces. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 329–345. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39, 329–358. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2006). Further assessment of the HEXACO Personality Inventory: Two new facet scales and an observer report form. Psychological Assessment, 18, 182–191. Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2008). The HEXACO personality factors in the indigenous personality lexicons of English and 11 other languages. Journal of Personality, 76, 1001–1053. Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., & de Vries, R. E. (2005). Predicting workplace delinquency and integrity with the HEXACO and Five-Factor models of personality structure. Human Performance, 18, 179–197. Paunonen, S. V., Haddock, G., Forsterling, F., & Keinonen, M. (2003). Broad versus narrow personality measures and the prediction of behaviour across cultures. European Journal of Personality, 17, 413–433. Paunonen, S. V., & Jackson, D. N. (2000). What is beyond the Big Five? Plenty! Journal of Personality, 68, 821–835. Tellegen, A. (in press). MPQ (Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire): Manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Van den Berg, P. T., & Feij, J. A. (2002). SpanningsBehoefteLijst – Selectieversie: Handleiding [Sensation Seeking Scale – Selection version: Manual]. Leiden: Psychologische Instrumenten Tests Services. Wittmann, M., Arce, E., & Santisteban, C. (2008). How impulsiveness, trait anger, and extracurricular activities might affect aggression in school children. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 618–623. Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of arousal. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zuckerman, M. (2007). Sensation seeking and risky behavior. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Zuckerman, M. (2008). Personality and sensation seeking. In G. J. Boyle, G. Matthews & D. H. Saklofske (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of personality theory and assessment. Vol. 1: Personality theories and models (pp. 379–398). Los Angeles: SAGE. Zuckerman, M., Kuhlman, D. M., Joireman, J., Teta, P., & Kraft, M. (1993). A comparison of three structural models for personality: The Big Three, the Big Five, and the alternative five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 757–768.