5
CAN YOU TELL SOMEONE’S LEVEL OF H?

Think of a casual acquaintance of yours and try to imagine what that person would or wouldn’t do. Cheat on their taxes? Keep the money found in a wallet? Manipulate the boss to get a promotion? Use other people to climb the social ladder? In this chapter, we’re interested in the question of how accurately you can estimate another person’s level of the H factor. Can you tell at first sight whether a person is high or low in H? Or can you never tell, even after knowing them for many years?

Personality in Strangers

Let’s start with strangers. Researchers have tried to find out whether people can judge the personalities of people they’ve just met. In these research studies, participants are asked to rate a stranger’s personality after just a few minutes of observation—perhaps after a short conversation, or watching the person in a short (and silent) video clip.

The results of these studies indicate that people are at least somewhat accurate when it comes to judging strangers’ personality traits, at least for traits associated with the X factor. Apparently, it’s fairly easy to judge how outgoing or lively a person is, even on first encounter. For the other personality factors, including the H factor, you generally can’t judge people accurately when you first meet them.

BOX 5–1       Narcissism at First Sight

Although people generally can’t tell another person’s level of H upon first meeting, the results of one study suggest that the combination of low H and high X is at least somewhat apparent even to strangers. As we discussed in Chapter 4, people who combine low H with high X are narcissistic. They have a grandiose sense of self-worth and a strong sense of being entitled to others’ admiration and attention. Narcissistic people tend to brag about their achievements and to flaunt their assets (whether financial or physical or otherwise), and they generally convey the attitude that they’re better than you are.

One study examined whether people can tell how narcissistic someone is just by looking at a photograph of that person.1 In this study, the photographed people didn’t know that their pictures would be taken, so the images in the photos probably showed their typical appearance. Those photographed people had completed a self-report narcissism scale, and their scores varied widely, ranging from very self-effacing to very self-promoting. When university students were asked to estimate the narcissism levels of all the photographed persons—all of whom were strangers to the students—their ratings were more accurate than chance, with correlations in the .20s.

How were people able to judge the narcissism levels of the photographed persons? In part, they noted whether the stranger was wearing flashy, expensive clothing. Also, in the case of a female stranger, narcissism was attributed (usually correctly) to those who showed cleavage, who wore heavy makeup, and who plucked their eyebrows. Still, the level of accuracy wasn’t high enough to be of much practical value; you wouldn’t want to rely much on these clues if you were trying to judge people’s levels of H—for example, in choosing an investment manager or finding a blind date for a friend. Also, these results apply to people who combine low H with high X; it would be harder to identify low-H people who are also low in X (see Chapter 4), because their low-H clues would be much less prominently displayed.

But can you ever get an accurate idea of someone’s level of H? Or is the H factor such a subtle aspect of personality that you can never really judge people’s levels very accurately even after many interactions with them? We’ll discuss this shortly, but first a more basic question: How can we figure out whether you’re accurate or not?

One way to evaluate your accuracy involves the use of personality questionnaires—or, as they are usually called, personality inventories. Many personality inventories have both a “self-report” form—in which a person responds to statements about his or her own personality—and also an “observer report” form—in which a person responds to statements about some other person’s personality. (See the Appendix for the self-report and observer report forms of the short HEXACO Personality Inventory.) By comparing your observer report about a person’s level of the H factor with that person’s own self-report, we could likely get a good sense of your accuracy.

Self-Reports of H: Are They Honest?

A little later in this chapter, we’ll give some results indicating how accurately people can judge another person’s level of the H factor. But first, you might wonder whether it makes sense to use a person’s self-report to decide how accurately you’ve judged his or her level of H. Indeed, people sometimes tell us it is impossible to measure the H factor through any kind of self-report inventory. The problem, they suggest, is that dishonest people won’t admit to being dishonest, because their very dishonesty causes them to claim falsely that they are honest. Superficially, this is logical, but the argument is based on a misunderstanding of what the H factor is all about: low-H people are willing to deceive for personal gain, but this doesn’t mean they’re pathologically unable or unwilling to tell the truth. When responding to personality inventories in anonymous research settings, low-H persons don’t have any incentive to lie about themselves. In fact, like other people, they generally find it more satisfying (and a lot easier) simply to describe themselves frankly and accurately. In such settings, low-H people are generally quite willing to indicate that they would act in low-H ways, such as cheating or manipulating others to get ahead. Therefore, self-reports of H are likely to be very accurate, at least when these are provided in anonymous research settings.

This is evident when we look at people’s scores on self-report scales measuring the H factor. Just as we find for the other five factors, a few people have very high scores, a few people have very low scores, and most people are in between. If low-H people were simply “faking” to present themselves as high in H, we’d expect most people to be “piled up” at the high end of the scale. Also, most of the people who have high self-reported levels of H don’t claim to have high levels of other desirable characteristics. If those people were simply faking, they’d likely be presenting themselves as all-around wonderful people.2

BOX 5–2 Measuring Personality: Self-Reports (and Observer Reports) Work Better Than You’d Think

To many people, the idea of using questionnaires or inventories to measure personality—or anything else—seems unscientific. In other branches of science, researchers use instruments that measure variables more objectively. For example, when meteorologists measure temperature or humidity or wind speed, they use thermometers and hygrometers and anemometers. They don’t ask people how warm or humid or windy it is.

But personality traits are different from the phenomena studied in other sciences. For one thing, a personality trait is a disposition—a tendency to show a certain style of behaving and thinking and feeling, as shown across a variety of relevant situations and over a long period of time. So if we want to measure someone’s level of a personality trait, we have to capture that disposition—that tendency—and there is no physical instrument that can do this. Although researchers have tried various ways of measuring personality (including direct observations of behaviour in controlled settings), the results indicate that well-constructed personality inventories have the crucial advantage of providing accurate personality descriptions with relatively little time and expense. (“Well constructed” is a key phrase here, because many inventories don’t measure personality accurately.) We can assess someone’s personality in broad outline by getting responses from that person (or from someone who knows him or her well) to a few dozen statements that are carefully developed to tap the traits of interest.

But how do we know that personality inventories are actually accurate? Consider several lines of evidence. First of all, scores on well-designed personality inventories are correlated with other variables that ought to reflect (at least to some extent) people’s personalities. For example, when we administer self-report personality inventories to university students, we find that their scores on the C factor predict their grade-point average, that their scores on the O factor predict their level of verbal ability, and that their scores on the X factor predict their popularity with their peers.3 Moreover, people’s scores on personality scales can even predict, to a modest extent, important life outcomes such as mortality/longevity, occupational attainment, and divorce—even when the personality measurements were made long before these outcomes actually happened.4

Another indication that personality inventories are accurate is that there is generally rather close agreement among various observer reports, as made independently by persons who are closely acquainted with the “target” person. In studies of university students’ personalities, there is fairly close agreement between the observer reports from their old “hometown” friends, from their new “university” friends, and from their parents—and all of these observer reports correlate rather well with the students’ own self-reports. The agreement among observer reports is particularly impressive given that in some cases, the hometown friends and the college friends have never even met one another and have known the target person during different time periods and in different social settings.5

All of these findings indicate that personality inventories can provide accurate information. However, none of this is to say that personality inventories will work well under all conditions. In particular, we’d be cautious about using self-reports with people who have an incentive to make a certain impression—imagine, for example, a person providing self-reports in applying for a desirable job or for early parole. Many studies have shown clearly that when people are instructed to “fake good” or “fake bad” on a personality inventory, they can do so.6 But when people respond to personality inventories in anonymous research settings, nearly all of them describe themselves frankly.

Knowing Someone’s Personality: H Is among the Last Things You Learn

Over the years, we’ve obtained self-reports and observer reports on the HEXACO factors from over 1300 pairs of university students. Some of these pairs were boyfriend and girlfriend, and a few of the pairs were relatives (usually siblings), but most of the pairs were friends, usually of the same sex and often living in the same house. When participating in our research studies, each member of a pair provides self-reports and observer reports in our research labs, without having any chance to consult with the other member.

What we’ve found is that, on average, self-report levels of H aren’t any higher than observer report levels. Our university students don’t claim to be any more sincere or modest than their friends say they are. (Note, by the way, that if the students were faking to appear high in H, their self-reports would be much higher than the observer reports from their friends.) And for the most part, if a student has a high self-reported level of H, then his or her friend’s observer report is high also; likewise, if a student has a low self-reported level of H, the friend’s observer report is probably low too. For these closely acquainted pairs of students, the correlations between self-reports and observer reports on the six HEXACO personality factors are all around .50. (For an explanation of what correlations mean, see Box 2–1.) This is a fairly high level of agreement, and it applies to all six factors, including H.

When we found that there was such good agreement between self-reports and observer reports of personality, we began to wonder: How long do you need to know someone—and how well do you need to know that person—before you can judge their personality? We checked to find out whether the level of agreement was higher for friends who had known each other for a longer time. The results surprised us: the agreement between self-reports and observer reports didn’t depend on how long the friends had known each other. In fact, the correlations between self-reports and observer reports were as high for pairs who had known each other for only about one year as they were for pairs who had known each other for several years. This was true for all six HEXACO factors, which suggests that people can get a fairly good idea of one another’s levels of H—how sincere or modest they are—within a year.

But even if it doesn’t take a long time to learn someone’s level of the H factor, it does take a lot of observation: you have to get to know that person rather well. We had also asked the members of each pair of students to indicate how well they knew each other, using a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (extremely well). For most pairs, the level of acquaintanceship was very high, generally between 7 and 10; however, a little more than 10% of our participants indicated levels of 6 or below.

We asked for these ratings in order to tell whether the level of agreement between self-reports and observer reports depends on how well people know each other. It does: the correlations between self- and observer reports are generally higher for people who consider themselves to be more closely acquainted.

This result probably doesn’t surprise you, but what’s interesting is that it doesn’t apply for every personality factor. Even when the pairs of students know each other only moderately well—that is, when their ratings are 6 or less—they are able to judge each other’s levels of X and E fairly accurately. But this result makes sense in light of some other facts. Apparently, as we noted earlier, you can judge X with at least some accuracy even in strangers,7 and E shows some fairly large differences between men and women, which means that a person’s sex gives at least a rough clue as to their level of the E factor. People can usually make good judgments about X and E even for people whom they know only moderately well.

What’s also interesting is that among people who aren’t very well acquainted, observer reports are noticeably less accurate for H (and also for A and C, to a lesser degree) than for the other personality factors. When you don’t know a person well, you may have a pretty accurate idea of his or her levels for the E, X, and O factors, but you’re likely to be less accurate for A, C, and especially H . However, this accuracy appears to increase sharply as people get to know each other better. When we spend a lot of time with a person in a wide variety of contexts, so that we get to know that person well, we can develop a pretty good idea of his or her level of the H factor.8

Of course, the results described above reflect an average across many pairs of people: some persons’ levels of H are more easily observed, and other persons’ levels are less easily observed. Likewise, some persons are better than average at judging someone’s H level, some persons worse. (We’re quite sure that you, for example, are much better than average.) But until you’ve had many opportunities to observe a person in widely varied settings or situations, it’s better to be cautious in judging their level of H, even if you’ve known them for many years.

H in the Workplace: Hard to Tell

One implication of these results is that some kinds of relationships probably don’t give us enough information to judge other people’s levels of the H factor. Consider the workplace. In Western countries, most people interact with their co-workers only when doing the job itself and rarely in other, more private settings. These situations are much less varied than the ones that we share with our friends and spouses and relatives. Moreover, people usually want to make a certain impression on their co-workers—whether supervisors or peers or subordinates—so they’re more likely to behave in ways that don’t necessarily reveal all aspects of their personalities.

We saw this first-hand when Joshua Bourdage, one of our graduate students, collected personality data from pairs of administrative employees at the university. He was interested in examining how employees try to manage the way they’re seen by their co-workers—in other words, their “workplace impression management.” Workplace impression management includes behaviours such as self-promotion (e.g., boasting about your experience or education), ingratiation (e.g., flattering your colleagues so that they will like you), exemplification (e.g., pretending to be busy even when you aren’t), supplication (e.g., pretending not to understand something in order to get someone’s help), and intimidation (e.g., letting others know that you can make things difficult for them).9 The common feature of these behaviours is that people use them to manipulate their co-workers and supervisors.

We recruited pairs of employees who had worked in the same department for at least six months. The participating employees came to our lab to give self-reports and observer reports on some scales measuring workplace impression management and also on our personality inventory, the HEXACO–PI–R. Each employee gave his or her reports anonymously and confidentially, and independently of his or her co-worker—the same procedure that we used with our pairs of university students, as described above. In this way, we could see whether the employees could tell how much their co-workers were managing impressions at work.

We collected personality reports from about 100 employees. When we first analyzed the data, the results looked very strange: the employees’ self-reports of workplace impression management were almost uncorrelated with the observer reports from their co-workers. It seemed to us that this couldn’t be right; surely the co-workers would notice each other’s impression management with at least some accuracy. But we checked the data set in several ways, and everything was done correctly. Contrary to what we had expected, there just wasn’t much agreement between employees’ self-reports and their co-workers’ observer reports. And these co-workers had generally known each other for some time—more than 18 months in the typical case—which meant that many of them had had ample opportunity to observe their co-workers.

Now, you might wonder whether the employees were really being frank about how much impression management they were doing in their workplace. If employees generally deny these behaviours, naturally this will result low correlations with the co-workers’ reports, if it’s the co-workers who are telling us how the employees really behave. But this apparently isn’t the case: the employees’ self-reports indicated just as much impression management, on average, as their co-workers’ observer reports did. (And because the responses were given in an anonymous, confidential setting, the employees had no reason to conceal these behaviours.) Apparently, some employees overestimate how much impression management their co-workers do, and other employees underestimate it. These findings mean that you can’t always tell what’s behind the outward behaviour of your co-workers. Some of those who behave as very good citizens may truly be acting out of good will; others may just be acting.

Not surprisingly, workers who did a lot of impression management tended to be low in the H factor. And our findings for the H factor were similar to those for impression management: employees’ self-reports on the H factor were only very weakly correlated with their co-workers’ observer reports. Just as co-workers couldn’t accurately judge each other’s levels of workplace impression management, they also couldn’t accurately judge each other’s levels of H. Now, the levels of agreement for the other personality factors (except X) were generally somewhat lower in the co-worker sample than in the student sample that we discussed above. As we speculated earlier, these differences probably reflected the fact that the co-workers typically weren’t so closely acquainted with each other as were the students (who, as you’ll recall, were usually close friends). But what’s striking is that the H factor showed particularly low accuracy in the co-worker sample. As we mentioned above, the correlation between self-reports and observer reports was about .50 in our student sample, yet in our co-worker sample it was only about .10.

Why is it difficult to judge accurately the levels of H of your co-workers? It may be because everyday interactions in the workplace don’t give many valid clues about people’s levels of the H factor. Most workplaces don’t offer many situations that let you see plainly which people are high in H and which people are low. Another reason is that people tend not to reveal their levels of H in the workplace: many low-H people make a calculated effort to come across as upstanding employees, but few high-H people do so, which makes it very hard to tell which people are which. (By contrast, people are less willing or less able to manage their impressions all of the time, so their friends and spouses and relatives will generally get a pretty good idea of their level of H.) Anyhow, the results of our research suggest that it would be easy to trust co-workers too much—or even to trust them too little—based on the limited information you typically get in the workplace.

To sum up, people are pretty accurate in judging the personalities of those who are close to them—the persons they know well. And for many aspects of personality, people can still make accurate judgments even for people they don’t know so well—such as their more distant social acquaintances, or their co-workers. But apparently, this doesn’t apply to the H factor: to be really accurate in judging a person’s level of H, you usually need to know that person very well.