A lexical examination of the facets of honesty-humility: The adjective checklist of honesty

The HEXACO model describes human personality through six major domains, each one further specified by four facets. Honesty-Humility is a key component of the model, and subsumes facets sincerity, fairness, modesty, and greed-avoidance. Although established and comprehensive measurement tools of HEXACO traits and facets through sentence items exist, a comprehensive assessment of Honesty-Humility through adjectives has not yet been developed. We present a novel instrument, the Adjective Checklist of Honesty (ACH), designed to enhance the assessment of Honesty by incorporating lexical descriptors of its facets, developed using a systematic approach. In Study 1, we identified a broad set of potential descriptors of Honesty-Humility facets, and refined it through independent raters to identify candidate items. In Study 2 (N = 266), we examined the factorial structure of the candidate items and developed the final 22-item version of the ACH. In Study 3 (N = 300), we confirmed the factorial structure of the shortened ACH questionnaire and collected validity evidence for the new scale. Our studies have important implications for the assessment of Honesty-Humility, shed light on the relationships between Honesty-Humility and truthfulness and, more generally, showcase the importance of a systematic approach in constructing assessment scales in personality psychology.