Higher order factors of personality: Do they exist? Personality and

set of six dimensions called the HEXACO factors (Ashton & Lee, 2001, 2007). In any case, there is widespread agreement that there exist only a few large personality factors and that these factors can summa-rize the personality domain reasonably well. The major dimensions of personality—whether those of the Big Five or those of the HEXACO framework—are generally conceptualized as being independent of each other. But when researchers construct self- or observer report instruments to assess these factors, the resulting scales are generally not mutually uncorrelated. Instead, there are usually substantial correlations among those scales, and the direction of the correlations is fairly consist-ent across samples and across inventories. For example, in the case of the Big Five factors, one frequently finds posi-tive correlations among measures of Emotional Stability (i.e., low Neuroticism), Conscientiousness, and Agreeable-ness, and also between measures of Openness to Experience (a.k.a. Intellect/Imagination) and Extraversion (Digman