Examining the Replicability of the Five HEXACO Personality Profiles Using the 60-Item HEXACO-PI-R: A Tutorial and Guidelines for Their Future Application

Previous research has identified five stable profiles in the 100-item HEXACO-PI-R. However, many researchers prefer to use the shorter 60-item HEXACO-PI-R. In this study we successfully identify a unified 5-profile solution across the 60- and 100-item measures of the HEXACO across four large samples totaling nearly 370,000 participants. However, our analyses with a holdout sample ( n ≈ 10,000) indicate that the ability to independently reproduce this solution with the 60-item measure decays rapidly beginning as early as sample sizes of n = 1250, which is larger than the sample size needed for the 100-item version. To address this issue, we developed a Tutorial which includes a step-by-step methodological guide and syntax for researchers to help identify these seemingly robust personality profiles within their own data. This enables researchers to side-step this methodological hurdle in their own work and ask independent and substantive questions about the nature and implications of these personality profiles. In doing so we aim to facilitate the advancement of research on the recoverability, generalizability, understanding and utility of these five personality profiles. Finally, we provide a procedural demonstration using this tutorial with a small archival sample that includes an analysis comparing the profiles on an auxiliary variable of potential interest.