The application of six-dimensional model of personality (The hexaco model of personality) to identify main qualities of personality of high school students in Vietnam

Nguyen Thi Lien and Bui Thi Thu Huyen 48 HNUE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE DOI: 10.18173/2354-1075.2017-0174 Educational Sciences, 2017, Vol. 62, Iss. 12, pp. 48-54 This paper is available online at THE APPLICATION OF SIX-DIMENSIONAL MODEL OF PERSONALITY (THE HEXACO MODEL OF PERSONALITY) TO IDENTIFY MAIN QUALITIES OF PERSONALITY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN VIETNAM Nguyen Thi Lien 1 and Bui Thi Thu Huyen 2 1 Institute for Educational Research, Hanoi National University of Education 2 Faculty of Psychology and Education, Hanoi National University of Education Abstract. Identifying basic traits of personality structure is one of the key issues in the area of personality psychology. Among certain models of personality structure proposed are the two models that have attracted researches since 20th century. They are the Five Factor Model - suggesting 5 factors of personality structure and the HEXACO model or the six-dimensional framework of personality. Despite being developed and studied over the past decade, the HEXACO model is believed to have more advantages than the Five Factor Model due to its theoretical foundation that based on cross-national and cultural lexical studies. Furthermore, the HEXACO model outweighs the Five Factor model to the extent as to anticipate behavioural and personality problems. In this article, with the study into the structure of personality based on the HEXACO model, we propose 5 major qualities of personality with detailed criteria for its application into Vietnamese high school students. Keywords: Five Factor models of personality, HEXACO model, high school students, personality, personality structure. 1. Introduction The forth-industrial revolution has deeply changed all social aspects in many countries, including Vietnam. This raises the requirement of identifying fundamental qualities of personality of students in order to help them in becoming global citizens and exhibiting traditional values. Professor Phạm Văn Vương demonstrated that “It is advisable to participate in global citizen activities with the unique value and through the shortest as well as the most effective way, which is the education” [14]. Similarly, Herbart - a philosopher in the 20 century - stated that the purpose of education was the development of personality. There have been numerous studies worldwide and in Vietnam, focusing on traits and qualities of personality as a stable and consistent psychological structure. One of the new cutting edge theories providing the model of personality structure used in the 20 th century is the Five Factor Model of personality (FFM) or Big Five Model (BFM). Attached with this theory is the appearance of Personality Inventory i.e., NEO-PI and NEO-PI revised (Personality Inventory-Revised) developed by Costa and McCrae in 1992 with five basic qualities including Neuroticism; Extraversion; Openness to Experience; Agreeableness and Conscientiousness [4, 5, 11]. The development of the Five Factor Model and the Personality Inventory brought about the prominent trend of personality Received: September 27, 2017. Revised: October 29, 2017. Accepted: December 5, 2017. Contact: Nguyen Thi Lien, e-mail address: [email protected] The application of Six-dimensional model of personality (the HEXACO model of personality) to identify 49 research in the 20 th century. There have been studies concentrating on the answers to two main questions: first, is the NEO-PI-R applicable to different cultures?; second, how are those 5 main qualities reflected in the sample of different countries and to what extent are they reflected in different countries and cultures? Numerous studies have pointed out the differences and similarities among those qualities of personality in different samples from Asia area such as China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc [6]. The impact of this trend on Vietnam is also recognized. However, theoretical researches as well as empirical studies on the Big Five Model with the application of NEO- PI in Vietnam have been limited. An outstanding study was the project KX05-07 by Phạm Minh Hạc et al., which utilized the NEO-PI-R to evaluate 5 prominent qualities of personality of high-school students, university ones, employees in Vietnam and Vietnamese in foreign countries [6]. In addition, the study by Đinh Thị Kim Thoa and Trần Văn Công also employed the short version of NEO-PI-R to seek for typical features of qualities of personality among more than 1182 students majoring in different fields in Hanoi and Da Nang [13]. After nearly one decade being in favour of the Five Factor Model of personality, various researchers pointed out main drawbacks of this model. For example, FFM is based on lexical study or lexical hypothesis, categorizing and modifying notes about personal differences and demonstrating that characteristics of personality can be built up with lexical structure and expressed under the form of adjective in most cases [2, 6]. Moreover, these lexical notes are made and summarized in English language only. Therefore, the lexical-based description and synthesis would not reflect personality structure to the fullest. As De Vries et al., (2009) questioned the FFM that whether it is comprehensive enough to incorporate of the full range of personality traits [4]. Then, another model of personality structure has been introduced with 6 factors, namely the HEXACO model proposed by Ashton and Lee (2004). It is supposed that this model results from restructuring the Five Factor Model in order to establish a more appropriate and comprehensive model of personality structure. The six factors in HEXACO model include Honest-Humility; Emotionality; Extraversion; Agreeableness; Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. The HEXACO model has thriven as a new trend in personality research in particular and personality psychology in general in the early of the 21 st century [1, 4]. 2. Content 2.1. Overview of the HEXACO model 2.1.1. The Five Factor Model of personality and measurement of personality based on five factor model One of the key issues of personality psychology is working out psychological structure of humans’ personality. In fact, the identification of fundamental traits of personality would help researchers discover the root and effects of personality changing in a consistent basis [8]. Therefore, authors have made great efforts in building up an optimal and appropriate personality structure model. It can be seen that there have been two prominent trends in researching personality structure since the early of the 20 th century, which are the Five Factor Model of personality (FFM) and six factor model of personality-the HEXACO model of personality. In the first half of the 20 century, personality structure was a controversial issue, which caused disagreements among researchers. However, in 1980s, many researchers supported the idea that personality change could be summarized by 5 specific and unique factors. These factors were identified based on lexical study (English) with the first researches carried out by Cattell in 1974, Nguyen Thi Lien and Bui Thi Thu Huyen 50 which covered a collection of adjective describing personality traits. The five common factors of personality, or in other words-the Big Five factor (Goldberg, 1990) included: (1) Extraversion (for example, being sociable, talkative vs. untalkative and shy); (2) Agreeableness (for example, being friendly, sympathetic vs. indisposed and cold); (3) Conscientiousness (for example, being organized, hardworking, strict vs. disorganized, lazy and careless); (4) Neuroticism (being comfortable vs. sad and anxiety); (5) Intellect/ Imagination (for example, being knowledgeable and imaginative vs. ignorant). Different trends in studying personality in the late of 1990s focused on the application of this Five Factor Model. For instance, in 1992, Costa and McCrae established the personality inventory with 5 basic factors, namely NEO-PI (NEO-Personality Inventory) and NEO-PI-R (Personality Inventory- Revised). In these inventories, there were 3 factors based on lexical study related to personality traits conducted by Catell in 1974, such as Extraversion, Neuroticism and Openness to experience; the other two factors of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were added owing to the results of recent lexical and personality studies. Accordingly, empirical studies on personality mostly concentrated on the investigation of the 5 factor model as well as the applicability of measuring scale NEO-PI-R in different countries and cultures. For example, the research using NEO-PT-R in 24 nations carried out by Fruyt et al., (2009) revealed that the factor “Openness to experience” was at low level in Asian countries like Malaysia, South Korea and China, which resulted from difficulty in identifying this factor among Asian adolescents. On the other hand, the factor “Conscientiousness” reflecting hardworking and trouble overcoming among Asian adolescents gained extremely high score, which demonstrated cultural identity of Asian countries with appreciation of success in studying. In other research by Phạm Minh Hạc et al., in 2007 with nearly 3000 students, young labour and Vietnamese in foreign countries, it was shown that in comparison with American students, Vietnamese ones aging from 17 to 20 achieved lower score of “Neuroticism” (emotional stability) and they also worse in terms of “Extraversion” and “Openness to experience”. Regarding the two factors of “Agreeableness” and “Consciousness”, there was no big difference in the average score between American and Vietnamese students. These apparent empirical research results reveal similarities of personality to some extent which represents for the culture of Asian countries, including Vietnam. Despite its effort in proposing the best and the most appropriate model of personality structure, the Five Factor Model of personality is still limited in certain aspects. Firstly, the FFM regards the personality structure as the result of 5 factors only. Secondly, FFM relies on terms denoting personal differences in only one language (English). Consequently, the question about the compatibility of personal differences with different cultures and languages should be raised. 2.1.2. Lexical study on personal differences in different languages: the appearance of the HEXACO model Based on the above mentioned drawbacks of FFM, Ashton and Lee (2004) conducted the lexical research related to personality structure not only in English, but also in 12 other languages like Italian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, etc. The results stated that relying on various languages, there should be six rather than five factors of the personality structure. In some languages, there were other descriptions about personal differences. Therefore, these authors suggested the HEXACO model with 6 factors/dimensions, among which, 3 ones were quite similar to the Big Five model including: The application of Six-dimensional model of personality (the HEXACO model of personality) to identify 51 (1) Extraversion; (2) Conscientiousness; (3) Openness to experience; the other two factors; (4) Emotionality and (5) Agreeableness (versus anger) were variations of Neuroticism (low emotional stability) and Agreeableness in the Big Five model. The biggest difference in the HEXACO model was the addition of a new factor: Honest-Humility, which reflected personal difference in terms of showing sincerity, fairness and modesty in contrary to insincerity, bias and arrogance. It is true to say that the HEXACO model of personality structure somewhat can be viewed as an alternative to the well-known FFM or Big Five model [1]. The six dimensional framework of personality can be summarized based on the explanation of specific details in the following table Table 1. The HEXACO model and explanation of qualities of personality No Factor Explanation Benefit of showing at high level Limit of showing at high level 1 Honest-Humility Sincerity Fairness Ungreediness Modesty Gaining co-operation (mutual support and nonaggression) Losing development opportunity as the result of taking advantage of other people 2 Agreeableness (opposite to anger) Toleration Forgiving Nonaggression Patience Gaining co-operation (mutual support and nonaggression) Losing development opportunity as the result of being exploited by other people 3 Emotionality Empathy / Emotional link with other people Harmlessness Help seeking Increasing opportunity for the survival of self and relatives Losing development opportunity due to relation to risks for self and relatives 4 Extraversion Sociability Leadership Preference to show off Social developing (friendship and workmates) Wasting time and energy Social environment risk 5 Conscientiousness Hardworking Organization Well-planned Improving the usage of different resources Reducing risks Investing more time and efforts 6 Openness to experience Curiosity Imaginativeness Creativeness Gaining physical and social development Wasting time and energy Dealing with natural and social environment risks Attached with the six factor model of personality proposed by Lee and Ashton was the measurement for personality structure so-called the HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO-PI; Lee & Ashton, 2006). This inventory has been adapted in different languages with positive results [8]. The exploration of the HEXACO model with specific explanation in table 1 reveals that the highlighted feature of this model is the synthesis of characteristics of personality based on multi- lingual lexical study. Thus, this model not only reflects typical qualities like the Big Five one but also Nguyen Thi Lien and Bui Thi Thu Huyen 52 introduces others that can be utilized to explain and predict important symptoms of personality that are not mentioned in the Big Five model. Different empirical studies have clarified these advantages of the HEXACO model. For example, De Vries and De Hoogh (2009) pointed out correlation among factors in the HEXACO model with egoism-the tendency of those only caring about themselves and disrespecting for the right of others when these others interfere with their economic and personal achievement. This study covered 349 students majoring in psychology and education in Holland. The authors worked out that the four factors of Extraversion, Emotionality, Agreeableness and Honest- Humility in the HEXACO model were closely linked with egoism. Especially, Honest-Humility was much closer to egoism than other factors [4]. Similarly, Shepherd and Belicki (2008) also explored the relationship among factors in the HEXACO model with qualities of toleration and forgiving in students and adults aging 18 to 50. It was demonstrated that Agreeableness was the most important and persuasive indicator for forgiving quality in the research subject [12]. As mentioned above, one of advantages of the HEXACO model is the probability to forecast personality and behavioural disorders. There has been series of researches on the correlation between Honest-Humility and symptoms of crime, hostility at workplace, stealing, alcohol abuse and public violation. Among these, there are ones that working out the relationship between people having low level of Honest-Humility and high level of committing crimes such as thief [9] and their wish for power as well as high potential of mental disorders [10]. 2.2. The HEXACO model and its application to identify main qualities of personality of high-school students in Vietnam Based on the investigation into personality structure according to the six dimensional frameworks i.e., the HEXACO model-a new model was introduced and has been utilized for more than ten years in the world. It is realized that this new model has appropriate factors, which can be employed as a reference to determine main qualities of personality of high school students in Vietnam. Although there have been no studies on the application of the HEXACO model among Vietnamese students so far, it is potential that this model is promising and should be considered as a suggestion for the identification of main qualities of personality of high school students in Vietnam. This is due to previous studies and analysis into the HEXACO model as well as the latest policies on education and training made by the Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam. First, research results of the project KX05-07 by Phạm Minh Hạc et al., revealed that the revised FFM model could be applicable to high-school students, university ones and Vietnamese labour with the addition of specific criteria for students and young labour to adapt with Vietnamese culture. Among 5 factors of personality, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were prominent ones among the researched objects. Second, the HEXACO model was concluded based on the multi-cultural and lingual research with different factors in personality. It can be used to predict problems related to personality and behaviour. Therefore, this model is potential to be applied to various cultures with different languages. Moreover, 6 factors in personality structure are synthesized through lexical study in Asian and European countries so they are widely employed. Third, in Vietnam nowadays the fundamental and comprehensive transformation of education and training has called for great attention. This is reflected in decree number 88/2014/QH13 by the Assembly, which regulated that “The transformation of education under the development of learners’ qualities and competence aims at showing their potentialities at most” [3]. Thus, it is essential to figure out qualities of personality with specific criteria, which can be measurable. The application of Six-dimensional model of personality (the HEXACO model of personality) to identify 53 Forth, the above mentioned orientation given by the Assembly was specified in the proposal for general high school curriculum released in 2017, in which it was emphasized that the aim of high school education should concentrate on establishing and developing main qualities for students such as patriotism, agreeableness, hardworking, honesty and responsibility. These qualities should be attached with three core competencies including autonomy and self-study; communication and co-operation; problem solution and creativity [3]. Within this study, we employ the idea considering personality as a group of personal characteristics and psychological qualities that reveal an individual’s social behaviour and value [7]. As a result, the identification of psychological qualities of personality is essential in order to suggest the orientation for the establishment and development of comprehensive personality for high-school students under the instruction of the Communist Party and the Assembly. However, it is supposed that the application of any personality model into the context of Vietnam requires careful consideration and adjustment so that it is suitable for the country’s culture and people’s characteristics. Thus, we propose that the identification of qualities of high-school students should be shown in 3 key aspects with 5 corresponding qualities specified as the followings: Table 2. Performance of qualities of personality of high-school students in Vietnam Aspects Qualities of personality Performance HEXACO model Personal development Self-respect - Confid