Current Research in Psychological Science: Part 2

"Psychometric Properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory"
Kibeom Lee and Micheal C. Ashton 

The authors believe honesty and humility are the basis of individual differences in altruistic behavior, specifically reciprocal altruism. High levels of honesty/humility are expected to cooperate even when they could defect on someone who is not likely to retaliate; they wouldn’t take advantage of another individual. Likewise high levels of Agreeableness would cooperate, even with someone who is not going to reciprocate. This is very interesting that the authors propose an evolutionary framework for the individual differences for adaptive problems. It seems as though the emotionality framework drives our kin altruism and inclusive fitness behaviors.

This could be empirically tested in a very simple way. Participants could play the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, a staple of studying altruistic and inclusive fitness behaviors. The participants’ personality could be measured using the HEXACO and then could play a few rounds of the game. Different conditions could be explored to determine the strength of the HEXACO’s ability to predict, likewise, to determine if situational variables influence these traits. The participant could play any number of rounds of the game and that could influence whether they adopt a certain strategy, such as tit-for-tat. The participant could also play with various individuals; participants of the same sex, same race, same age, or different sex, age, or race. Would a person with high honesty/humility identify with a wider range of individuals as “kin” and thus extend altruism?

Evolutionary biology presupposes individuals that identify (select) as their kin should share genetic material and identification of kin hinges upon indicators of genetic material. However, reciprocal altruism is based upon identifying individuals, who might not necessarily be kin, but likely to reciprocate in the future; the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” understanding between two people drives reciprocal altruism. Individuals must rely on social cues that are indicative of individuals that are more likely to reciprocate. It would be interesting if honesty/humility individuals were actually just poor at determining if individuals would reciprocate or not; likewise, poor at recognizing individuals that would manipulate them. This might explain why they are more likely to cooperate with individuals that are not likely to reciprocate and even less likely to take advantage of individuals that would not reciprocate. Empirically testing this would be much more difficult. It has already been shown individuals that are more attractive are more likely to be recipients of reciprocal altruism, if there are other indicators that could be found that others rely on, those could be used to test the honesty/humility individuals’ judgments.