THE MEASUREMENT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS BY THE HEXACO

The issue of personality is one of the most conspicuous topics about human beings that psychology is particularly interested in. The main purpose of personality studies is to explain the causes of behavior with scientific methods. Individuals who interact with his / her environment consciously or unconsciously in the daily life have reacted to the events and stimulants that occur around them by their worldviews, values, thoughts, and beliefs. As well as being an innate potential, personality is shaped by the interaction with the environment. The university years of a person is an important period in shaping the personality. The purpose of this research is to determine the personality traits of students by using HEXACO. Most of the studies on personality have shown that Big Five Model of personality is a widely used instrument in measuring personality traits. However, recently, a six factor inventory which is developed by Lee and Ashton is used. This inventory is called HEXACO which is the abbreviation of Honesty Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to experience. HEXACO can be used in 27 different languages and it consists of long form (100 items) and short form (60 items). Compared with the Big Five Model, HEXACO's personality traits are more useful in determining human behavior and attitudes (Milojev & Sibley, 2014, p. 30; Sohn & Lee, 2012, p. 117). In addition, adding a sixth factor makes the model more harmonious (Thalmayer & Saucier, 2014, p. 483). Honesty humility factor is the most important feature of this model. This factor is evaluated under agreeableness factors in Big Five Model. Also, the Emotionality factor in HEXACO is interpreted by some authors as Neuroticism factor in Big Five Model. But actually it is different than Neuroticism factor. The most important difference is that this factor does not include nervousness and irritability which are the elements of the Neuroticism factor. Secondly, unlike the Neuroticism factor, this factor includes sensuality and sensitivity on the positive side and courage and endurance on the negative side. Although the Agreeableness factor in HEXACO is similar to Agreeableness factor in Big Five Model, they differ in their contents. The most important difference is that moodiness and irritability which are the elements of HEXACO Agreeableness factor, are the elements of Neuroticism factor in Big Five Model (Lee & Ashton, 2004). In summary, Extraversion and Conscientiousness factors in HEXACO are nearly the same as Extraversion and Conscientiousness factors in Big Five Model. However, Agreeableness and Emotionality factors in HEXACO are slightly different from Agreeableness and Neuroticism factors in Big Five Model (Boies, Yoo, Ebacher, Lee, & Ashton, 2004, p. 994-995)