ObjectiveThe extensive use of two diverging personality taxonomies (the Big Five and HEXACO models) in contemporary research creates a need for understanding how traits connect to each other across taxonomies. Previous research has approached this at both a highly general (domain‐) level as well as at a highly specific (facet‐) level. The present report is the first to use the intermediate (aspect‐) level of the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) to understand the connections between the two models.MethodWe explored these associations in a meta‐analysis of four samples drawn from three countries (total N = 1,586).ResultsWe observed that each HEXACO domain correlated ≥|0.51| with one or more BFAS aspects. Half of the aspects were more strongly associated with HEXACO facets than with HEXACO domains, sometimes markedly so.ConclusionAlthough many domains, aspects, and facets are similarly represented across the two models, this was not always the case. Researchers seeking to use one model to extend findings built primarily off the other should carefully consider how well represented their traits of interest are in the other assessment. Psychology instructors are encouraged to use the BFAS to illustrate the subtler distinctions between the Big Five and HEXACO models.

Overclaiming-in which individuals overstate their level of familiarity with items-has been proposed as a potential indicator of positive self-presentation. However, the precise nature and determinants of overclaiming are not well understood. Herein, we provide novel insights into overclaiming through 4 primary studies (comprising 6 samples) and a meta-analysis. Based on past empirical work and theoretical discussions suggesting that overclaiming may be the result of several processes-including an egoistic tendency to self-enhance, intentional impression managing behavior, and memory biases-we investigate various potential dispositional bases of this behavior. We hypothesized that overclaiming would best be predicted by a dispositional tendency to be curious and explorative (i.e., high Openness to Experience) and by a dispositional tendency to be disingenuous and self-centered (i.e., low Honesty-Humility). All studies provided support for the first hypothesis; that is, overclaiming was positively associated with Openness. However, no study supported the hypothesis that overclaiming was associated with Honesty-Humility. The third and fourth studies, where multiple mechanisms were compared simultaneously, further revealed that overclaiming can be understood as a result of knowledge accumulated through a general proclivity for cognitive and aesthetic exploration (i.e., Openness) and, to a lesser extent, time spent in formal education. (PsycINFO Database Record

Preliminary results were presented by Timothy F. Bainbridge at the European Conference on Personality, the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences Conference, and at the Australian Conference on Personality and Individual Differences.Supplementary documents and materials, including analysis code and data, can be found on the OSF: osf.io/f9hmg.

In the research reported here, we examined whether individual differences in authoritarianism have expressions in early childhood. We expected that young children would be more responsive to cues of deviance and status to the extent that their parents endorsed authoritarian values. Using a sample of 43 preschoolers and their parents, we found support for both expectations. Children of parents high in authoritarianism trusted adults who adhered to convention (vs. adults who did not) more than did children of parents low in authoritarianism. Furthermore, compared with children of parents low in authoritarianism, children of parents high in authoritarianism gave greater weight to a status-based "adult = reliable" heuristic in trusting an ambiguously conventional adult. Findings were consistent using two different measures of parents' authoritarian values. These findings demonstrate that children's trust-related behaviors vary reliably with their parents' orientations toward authority and convention, and suggest that individual differences in authoritarianism express themselves well before early adulthood.

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A burgeoning line of research examining the relation between personality traits and political variables relies extensively on convenience samples. However, our understanding of the extent to which using convenience samples challenges the generalizability of these findings to target populations remains limited. We address this question by testing whether associations between personality and political characteristics observed in representative samples diverged from those observed in the sub-populations most commonly studied in convenience samples, namely students and internet users. We leverage ten high-quality representative datasets to compare the representative samples with the two subsamples. We did not find any systematic differences in the relationship between personality traits and a broad range of political variables. Instead, results from the sub-samples generalized well to those observed in the broader and more diverse representative sample.

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Objective Many studies have demonstrated that personality traits predict academic performance for students in high school and college. Much less evidence exists on whether the relationship between personality traits and academic performance changes from childhood to adolescence, and existing studies show very mixed findings. This study tests one hypothesis—that the importance of Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness for academic performance changes fundamentally during school—against an alternative hypothesis suggesting that the changing relationships found in previous research are largely measurement artifacts. Method We used a nationwide sample of 135,389 primary and lower secondary students from Grade 4 to Grade 8. We replicated all results in a separate sample of another 127,375 students. Results We found that academic performance was equally strongly related to our measure of Conscientiousness at all these grade levels, and the significance of Agreeableness and Emotional Stability predominantly reflected their connections with Conscientiousness. However, age also appeared to shape the relationship between Emotional Stability and performance. Conclusion Amidst the replication crisis in psychology these findings demonstrate a very stable and predictable relationship between personality traits and academic performance, which may have important implications for the education of children already in primary school.