What is the difference between the Big Five and HEXACO?

Both describe personality as continuous traits. HEXACO adds a sixth factor, Honesty-Humility — sincerity, fairness, and a low drive for status for its own sake — which the Big Five does not capture on its own, and it reorganises emotion across Emotionality, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. In practice the first five are very similar; HEXACO is most useful when you specifically care about the honesty/entitlement axis.

Is HEXACO more accurate than the Big Five?

Neither is 'more accurate' in general. HEXACO reliably surfaces an extra dimension that matters for predicting behaviours like exploitation or rule-breaking, which the Big Five under-weights. For most everyday self-reflection the two agree closely, and both are self-report snapshots, not measurements of a fixed essence.

Which should I take, Big Five or HEXACO?

Take the Big Five if you want the most-researched, widely comparable profile. Reach for a HEXACO inventory if the sincerity-versus-entitlement dimension is the question you actually have. Whichever you pick, read scores as tendencies that shift with context — not a label or a diagnosis.

Compare & choose

Big Five vs HEXACO: five traits, or six?

Last reviewed: October 2026 · Reviewer: AssessWiki Editorial · 5 min read

The short answer: HEXACO is the Big Five with a sixth trait bolted on — Honesty-Humility — plus a slightly different way of spreading emotion across factors. If you only want the best-studied, most comparable profile, use the Big Five. If the sincerity-versus-entitlement question is the one you actually have, HEXACO is worth the extra factor.

The two models side by side

Big Five (OCEAN)	HEXACO
Openness to Experience	Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness	Conscientiousness
Extraversion	eXtraversion
Agreeableness	Agreeableness (narrower)
Neuroticism	Emotionality (fear, anxiety, dependence)
—	Honesty-Humility ← the added sixth

HEXACO was developed by Ashton and Lee from cross-language lexical research; both models are continuously scored trait frameworks and are used descriptively here — AssessWiki is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or paid by any publisher.

What Honesty-Humility actually adds

Honesty-Humility captures a strand the Big Five leaves mostly to low Agreeableness: a person's willingness to exploit others for gain, and their drive for status. Low scorers tend toward flattery, manipulation, and greed; high scorers toward fairness, sincerity, and modesty. Because it isolates that axis, HEXACO tends to predict rule-breaking and exploitative behaviour a little better than the five-factor model alone — the main reason to reach for it.

What neither one can tell you

Both are self-report trait snapshots. Neither diagnoses anything, decides a hire, or fixes your identity; scores move with mood and context, and near the middle of a trait even the number is soft. A sixth factor is a more detailed lens, not a truer you. The point of either is to give you something specific to notice and act on — not a score to defend.

Understand it, then take one

AssessWiki files the Big Five under Costa and McCrae with its evidence and limits stated plainly, and links a free assessment. Start there; the HEXACO idea carries over, and its added axis becomes concrete once you can see your own trait profile.

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