Explore sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance and modesty as self-descriptions, with higher, lower and mixed readings.
Explore sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance and modesty as self-descriptions, with higher, lower and mixed readings.
Read this domain continuously, with its four facets in mind. A higher number is neither a better person nor an independently verified trait.
Four related questions, not a character certificate
Sincerity asks about presenting yourself without calculated flattery or manipulation. Fairness concerns taking advantage, deception and returning what is not yours. Greed avoidance concerns the appeal of wealth, luxury and status; modesty concerns special treatment and self-importance. These four facets contribute equally to this domain. They are related questions, not interchangeable claims. Wanting a comfortable home does not establish dishonesty, and speaking modestly does not establish fairness.
Reading a higher self-report
A higher keyed mean indicates more endorsement of the combined sincerity, fairness, modesty and reduced status-seeking content in this bank. You might describe returning extra change or declining a misleading compliment. Treat that as a starting point for checking behaviour, rather than evidence that other people should trust you automatically. Impression management, different interpretations and limited opportunities can all shape an answer. The website has not observed your conduct.
Reading a lower self-report
A lower mean may reflect stronger status attraction, willingness to flatter, or less agreement with modesty content. Inspect which statements fit before naming a pattern. Ambition, assertive negotiation and explaining an achievement can be legitimate and are not automatically manipulation. Conversely, a low result cannot excuse taking advantage of someone. The practical question is what you did, what was disclosed and whether the other person could choose freely.
Middle and mixed patterns
A mean near three can come from moderate answers throughout, strong fairness alongside strong luxury interest, or contrasting answers within a facet. It is not a certificate of moral balance and does not mean an average citizen. The same total can hide different combinations. This report deliberately keeps the continuous domain and all six guides visible instead of selecting an honest or dishonest type.
A transparent forty-item example
Imagine thirty-nine keyed ratings of three and one keyed rating of five. The raw sum is 122 and the mean is 3.05. A negative item answered one contributes five, while a negative item answered five contributes one. This example explains the arithmetic only; 3.05 is not a meaningful cutoff. If even one item is NA, the other thirty-nine are not used to estimate a personal domain score.
Check words against an actual choice
Think of a low-stakes exchange involving credit, money or a promise. What did you know, what did you say and what would the other person report? Someone may dislike luxury yet conceal an error; another may enjoy expensive things while being transparent and fair. Those counterexamples prevent a single preference from becoming a verdict about the whole person. Keep other people’s private details out of saved notes.
One small accountability practice
For a week, choose one concrete practice such as naming your contribution accurately, correcting an overstatement or making a small conflict of interest explicit. Compare your intended message with what another person could reasonably understand. You do not need to chase a higher score or disclose sensitive incidents. A useful next step improves a specific interaction and leaves room to revise your self-description.
Source, scoring and edition limits
This guide accompanies all forty published items for this domain in the preliminary IPIP scales linked to Lee and Ashton (2004), not the current official HEXACO-PI-R sixty or hundred item inventories. Five accuracy responses score one to five; negative keys use six minus the response. Forty valid ratings give a raw sum of forty to two hundred and a mean; the report divides that unrounded sum by forty and displays two decimals. Each of four ten-item facets has equal weight, but this edition reports the domain rather than separate facet scores. Any NA withholds this domain’s personal sum and mean. English wording and keys are retained, with interleaved presentation and our Chinese trial translation. Those presentation, translation and missing-response choices have no independent psychometric validation here. Public-domain permission is a reuse right, not scientific endorsement. There are no population norms, percentile ranks, clinical thresholds, hiring decisions or fixed types.