Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 389–394

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Trait forgiveness and traitedness within the HEXACO model of personality

Steven Shepherd a,*, Kathryn Belicki b

a Psychology Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1b Brock University St. Catharines, ON, Canada L2S 3A1

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 9 November 2007Received in revised form 12 April 2008Accepted 15 May 2008Available online 26 June 2008

Keywords:ForgivenessHEXACOPersonalityTraitednessConsistency

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2008 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.05.011

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 519 342 6807.E-mail address: s2shephe@artsmail.uwaterloo.ca (

a b s t r a c t

The current study aimed to establish how trait forgiveness relates to broad personality factors as definedby the HEXACO model of personality, as opposed to the Big Five/Five-Factor models of personality. Sincethe HEXACO model differs from the Big Five model, different correlations were predicted to emerge, thushighlighting the importance of specific content in predicting trait forgiveness. Secondly, it was proposedthat isolating cross-situationally consistent forgivers would lead to stronger correlations between for-giveness and various traits traditionally associated with trait forgiveness. The results found that Hon-esty–Humility, Agreeableness, and Emotionality, as well as various facets of the Extraversion andConscientiousness factors, were related to trait forgiveness. Due to differences in content between theHEXACO and the Big Five, specific content relating to trait forgiveness could be identified. However, iso-lating consistent forgivers did not yield stronger correlations between personality and trait forgiveness.

� 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

There is a growing body of psychological literature devoted tostudying trait forgiveness (or ‘‘forgivingness”), which attempts tounderstand peoples’ general tendency to forgive or to not forgiveacross situations (Berry, Worthington, Parrott, O’Connor, & Wade,2001; Brown, 2003; Walker & Gorsuch, 2002). Specifically,researchers have been concerned with identifying the basic per-sonality dimensions that are associated with forgiveness in orderto better predict forgiving behaviour, and to understand the per-sonality-based mechanisms that are behind it (McCullough,2001). While much of this research has been conducted using theBig Five/Five-Factor model (FFM) of personality (Goldberg, 1990;McCrae & Costa, 1987), the current study will instead utilize the re-cently developed HEXACO model of personality (Lee & Ashton,2004). We also examine whether or not individuals differ in theconsistency of their forgivingness across situations, and whetheror not differences in consistency moderate the relations betweenpersonality and forgivingness.

Five-Factor models of personality propose that personality iscomprised of five superseding factors that in combination formnarrower personality traits (McCrae & Costa, 1987). These factorsinclude Neuroticism (vs. Emotional Stability), Extraversion, Open-ness to Experience/Intellect, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness(Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1987). More recently, Lee andAshton (2004) have proposed that personality is bettersummarized using a six-factor model instead. Their six-dimen-

ll rights reserved.

S. Shepherd).

sional HEXACO model of personality includes the following factors:Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness,ConScientiousness, and Openness to Experience. This model repre-sents a re-rotation of the traditional Five-Factors, plus the additionof the new Honesty–Humility factor. There are several advantagesto the HEXACO model that have been illustrated in a number ofstudies (for a review, see Ashton & Lee, 2007). Therefore, the cur-rent study is primarily concerned with establishing a relationshipbetween trait forgiveness and various factors of the HEXACOmodel.

1.1. The HEXACO model of personality and forgiveness

In attempting to predict how the HEXACO model will relate totrait forgiveness, it must be noted that several of the HEXACO’s fac-tors are different from those of other models, despite sharing sim-ilar names and some similar content. The content of Agreeablenessand Neuroticism/Emotional Stability in the Five-Factor models isre-rotated and dispersed among the HEXACO’s Honesty–Humility,Agreeableness, and Emotionality factors. According to Lee andAshton (2004), Honesty–Humility represents a tendency to be fair,sincere, and unassuming versus being sly, greedy, and pretentious.Agreeableness is characterized by being calm, cooperative, andeasy-going, as opposed to being harsh, temperamental, and critical.Therefore, The HEXACO’s Agreeableness factor is partly character-ized by the irritability and temperamental content that normallyresides within the Big Five’s neuroticism factor. The HEXACO’sEmotionality factor is then characterized by sentimentality, sensi-tivity, fearfulness, and anxiety, as opposed to toughness, bravery,and self-assurance.

390 S. Shepherd, K. Belicki / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 389–394

The remaining factors in the HEXACO model are generally un-changed from their Five-Factor counterparts (Lee & Ashton, 2004).Extraversion is characterized by sociability and cheerfulness versusshyness and passivity. The HEXACO’s Conscientiousness factor in-cludes being thorough and hardworking versus being sloppy andimpulsive. However, this factor is void of any moral content. Finally,Openness to Experience is characterized by inquisitiveness andunconventionality versus conventionality and a lack of creativity.

While no previous research has attempted to investigate traitforgiveness using the HEXACO model, there are studies that pro-vide some direction in predicting how they will relate to one an-other. Specifically, previous research suggests that Agreeableness,Emotionality, and Honesty–Humility should correlate with traitforgiveness.

FFM Agreeableness is perhaps one of the most well supportedcorrelates of forgiveness (see Mullet, Neto, & Rivière, 2005 for a re-view). FFM Agreeableness is associated with being good-natured,selfless, flexible, sympathetic, and forgiving (McCrae & Costa,1987). Intuitively, Agreeableness (in all of its forms) should there-fore relate to forgiveness, since forgiveness is seen as a prosocialand altruistic act (Ashton, Paunonen, Helmes, & Jackson, 1998;McCullough, 2001) that is associated with empathy and goodwill(McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997). Numerous empiricalstudies have supported these intuitive and conceptual links(Mullet et al., 2005). The connection between forgiveness andagreeableness is so much so that the HEXACO includes forgivenessas one of the facets that make up its Agreeableness factor.

It is also important to mention that the HEXACO’s Agreeable-ness factor should also benefit from gaining the irritability, anger,and temperamentalness content that is typically found in neuroti-cism. After all, if forgiveness is effortful and deliberate (Neto &Mullet, 2004), and represents an inhibition of vengeful thoughtsor retaliation (Ashton et al., 1998; McCullough, 2001; McCulloughet al., 1997), then it would be expected that anger and negative af-fect impede this process. Therefore, HEXACO Agreeableness shouldbe a powerful predictor of forgiveness.

In addition to Agreeableness, Emotionality should also relate totrait forgiveness. While neuroticism (Emotionality’s quasi-equiva-lent factor in the Big Five model) has been found to negatively cor-relate with forgiveness (Brose, Rye, Lutz-Zois, & Ross, 2005; Brown,2003; Brown & Phillips, 2005; Neto & Mullet, 2004; Walker & Gor-such, 2002), the potential relationship between Emotionality andforgiveness should be established on its own merits. Firstly, emo-tionality is related to empathic concern and kin altruism (Lee &Ashton, 2004). Therefore, given the established relationships be-tween empathy and forgiveness (for review see Belicki, Rourke, &McCarthy, 2007), and altruism and forgiveness (Ashton et al.,1998; McCullough, 2001), a positive correlation between Emotion-ality and forgiveness might be expected. However, there are qual-ities that define the negative pole of Emotionality that should alsorelate to higher levels of forgiveness, such as self-assurance andlower levels of anxiety. Based on this particular content, one wouldinstead expect a negative relationship between Emotionality andforgiveness, as is predicted in the current study. Specifically, it ispredicted that the anxiety facet of Emotionality will be negativelyrelated to forgiveness. This is based on the consistent finding thatanxiety acts as a barrier to forgiveness (see Mullet et al., 2005). Sec-ondly, because the negative pole of Emotionality’s dependence fa-cet is defined by self-assurance and being able to cope withdifficulties, it is predicted that this facet will also be negatively re-lated to forgiveness.

Finally, the content of the Honesty–Humility factor largely sug-gests that those who score high on this factor should be more for-giving, as high scorers on Honesty–Humility tend to be loyal,truth-loving, altruistic, fair, and sincere in interpersonal relation-ships (Ashton et al., 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2004). In connection with

this, past studies have illustrated that higher levels of cooperative-ness (Karremans & Van Lange, 2004), a willingness to share re-sources (McCullough, 2001), and gratitude (Mullet et al., 2005) allrelate to trait forgiveness. Furthermore, Worthington (1998) identi-fies a humility component to forgiveness, and suggests that acertain level of modesty and sincerity (both facets of the Hon-esty–Humility factor) are necessary to see one’s self as being imper-fect and capable of forgiving.

Correspondingly, characteristics that represent the negative endof Honesty–Humility, such as pretentiousness, conceitedness,greed (Ashton et al., 2004), and narcissism (Lee & Ashton, 2005)have been shown to act against forgiving behaviour. For example,Exline, Baumeister, Bushman, Campbell, and Finkel (2004), foundthat those who scored high in narcissistic entitlement (character-ized by expecting special treatment and seeking-repayment forpersonal harm) were especially concerned with saving face. There-fore, they downplayed the virtues of forgiveness, and perceived itas a risk to one’s pride and self-image. This extreme protection ofone’s self image then drives individuals away from forgiving andtoward retribution. Similarly, Perugini, Gallucci, Presaghi, andErcolani (2003) have identified a construct (conceptually similarto low forgiveness) called ‘‘negative reciprocity”, which capturesthis heightened need to punish others for their negative behaviour.It was found that negative reciprocity showed a substantial, nega-tive correlation with ‘‘Fairness/Non-exploitation”, which is concep-tually similar to Honesty–Humility.

Based on this research and the content that defines Honesty–Humility, it is expected that this factor will be positively related toforgiveness. Specifically, Honesty–Humility should show strongercorrelations with measures that contain vengeance-seeking content(such as the Trait Forgiveness Scale, and the ‘‘forgiveness of others”subscale of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale, which will be describedlater in this article). This prediction is based on the aforementionedfinding that aspects of Honesty–Humility, such as valuing fairnessand condemning exploitation, are negatively related to seeking pun-ishment against others (Perugini et al., 2003). Conversely, (low)Honesty–Humility shares much in common with narcissistic enti-tlement, which is positively related to seeking retribution, and neg-atively related to forgiveness (Exline et al., 2004). In making thesepredictions regarding Honesty–Humility and forgiveness, we hopeto show that Honesty–Humility can uniquely contribute to ourunderstanding of trait forgiveness (see Ashton & Lee, 2007 for a re-view of how the HEXACO model may better account for certain per-sonality variables above and beyond the Big Five/FFM).

In addition to examining trait forgiveness within the space ofthe HEXACO factors, a second goal of the current study was toexamine whether or not individuals vary in how consistently theyforgive across situations. Bem and Allen (1974) suggested that cer-tain traits are only relevant to some people, who then show moreconsistent behaviour across situations (traitedness). Conversely,others rely more on situational factors, and are therefore more dif-ficult to predict using global trait measures (see Cucina & Vasilop-oulos, 2005 for a more recent statement of this argument). Wetherefore assessed individuals’ consistency in forgivingness acrosssituations and examined whether this moderated the relations be-tween measures of forgiveness and the HEXACO.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

A sample of 178 undergraduate students, 146 women and 32men, participated in the current study. The modal age of partici-pants was 18, with a mean age of 19.49 (SD = 3.82). Age rangedfrom 18 to 50 years old.

Table 1Zero-order correlations between forgiveness measures

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. TNTF –2. TTF .53** –3. TFS .51** .74** –4. HFS (self) .18* .26** .30** –5. HFS (others) .43** .62** .76** .37** –6. HFS (situation) .40** .50** .52** .57** .55** –

* p < .05.** p < .01 (two-tailed).

S. Shepherd, K. Belicki / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 389–394 391

2.2. Measures

Participants completed four measures of dispositional forgive-ness, a single-item measure of traitedness, and the HEXACO Per-sonality Inventory (HEXACO-PI).

2.2.1. Transgression narrative test of forgiveness (TNTF)The TNTF is a scenario-based measure of forgivingness that con-

tains five different scenarios, each involving the participant takingthe role of the victim (Berry et al., 2001). After each scenario, theparticipant indicates how likely they would be to forgive the trans-gressor. Higher scores indicate a disposition to forgive across situa-tions. Internal consistency varies from .73 to .81 (Berry et al., 2001).

2.2.2. Tendency to Forgive Scale (TTF)The TTF is a four-item measure of dispositional forgiveness

developed by Brown (2003). The purpose of the TTF is to measurepeoples’ tendency to harbour grudges or to let go of them, withhigher scores indicating higher levels of dispositional forgiveness.Brown (2003) reported an alpha of .73.

2.2.3. Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS)The HFS (Thompson et al., 2005), is an 18-item questionnaire

that contains three six-item subscales that measure forgiveness ofothers (e.g., ‘‘Although others have hurt me in the past, I have even-tually been able to see them as good people”), forgiveness of self(e.g., ‘‘With time I am understanding of myself for mistakes I havemade”), and Forgiveness of Situations (e.g., ‘‘I eventually makepeace with bad situations in my life”). The internal consistency ofthese subscales ranges from .72 to .87 (Thompson et al., 2005).

2.2.4. Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS)The TFS is a 10-item measure of trait forgiveness with an inter-

nal consistency ranging from .74 to .80 (Berry, Worthington,O’Connor, Parrott, & Wade, 2005).

2.2.5. Measures of traitednessThe participants’ level of cross-situational consistency was as-

sessed by simply asking participants, ‘‘how much does your likeli-hood of forgiving someone depend on the situation?” Participantsanswer this global consistency item using a five point scale (1 = mylikelihood of forgiving someone always depends on the situation,2 = mostly depends on the situation, 3 = somewhat depends on thesituation, 4 = rarely depends on the situation, 5 = never depends onthe situation). This measure aims to assess whether or not disposi-tional forgiveness is relevant to the personality of the individual.

A second measure of traitedness was also included in the cur-rent study, which involved computing each participant’s standarddeviation from their own mean on each measure, as done in paststudies that have used interitem variance as a measure of traited-ness (Baumeister, 1991; Baumeister & Tice, 1988; Britt, 1993; Cuci-na & Vasilopoulos, 2005).

2.2.6. PersonalityThe current study uses the HEXACO-PI (Lee & Ashton, 2004) to

measure six personality factors: Honesty–Humility, Emotionality,Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness toExperience. The version of the HEXACO-PI that was used contains16 items for each of the six-factors. Cronbach’s alpha for each ofthe six-factors have been reported to range from .89 to .92 (Lee& Ashton, 2004).

2.3. Procedure

Groups of four to twenty participants were given the question-naire package after signing a consent form. Six different random

ordered versions of the questionnaire package were distributedamong participants to control for possible order effects.

3. Results

Reliability analyses found that all of the measures had accept-able levels of internal consistency. Cronbach’s alphas were as fol-lows: TNTF = .71, TTF = .72, HFS (self) = .68, HFS (other) = .83, HFS(situations) = .74, TFS = .79, HEXACO = .78 to .89.

Correlations among the forgiveness measures are given in Table 1.Correlations between forgiveness and specific facets of the HEXAC-O can be found in Table 2. Simultaneous multiple regressions werecalculated regressing each of the forgiveness measures on the sixHEXACO factors. Table 3 contains the Beta weights as well as thezero-order correlations between the HEXACO factors and thevarious forgiveness measures. Because Agreeableness contains a‘‘forgiveness” facet, regressions were computed both with andwithout this facet. Beta weights for regressions that did not includethe forgiveness facet are given in parentheses in Table 3. Resultsconcerning people’s consistency scores can be found in Table 4.

Overall, it can be seen that Agreeableness (+) was the strongestpredictor of forgiveness, followed by Honesty–Humility (+), Emo-tionality (�), and to some extent, Extraversion (+). This pattern ofresults was maintained even when the forgiveness facet of agree-ableness was excluded from any of the regression analyses (albeitaccounting for slightly less variance in the various trait forgivenessmeasures). As expected, the anxiety facet was the strongest of theEmotionality facets in predicting forgiveness. The dependence andfearfulness facets of Emotionality were both comparable to one an-other in their (negative) relationships to the various forgivenessmeasures. There was mixed evidence for the prediction that Hon-esty–Humility would be most strongly related to forgiveness mea-sures that contain vengeance- and retribution-seeking content(specifically, the TFS and the forgiveness of others subscale of theHFS). Specifically, while Honesty–Humility was most strongly re-lated to the TFS, it did not emerge as a unique predictor for the for-giveness of others subscale. Finally, the prudence and diligencefacets of Conscientiousness were often related to forgiveness.

It can be seen in Table 4 that the majority of the participantsstated that their likelihood of forgiving someone either mostly oralways depends on the situation, suggesting that situational factorsare critical to determining whether or not to forgive. However, toexplore whether or not consistency moderated the relations be-tween personality and forgiveness, we followed the method pre-scribed by Cucina and Vasilopoulos (2005). Hierarchical multipleregressions were computed for each of the HEXACO factors byentering a forgiveness score, a consistency score (this was donefor each forgiveness and consistency measure combination), thesquare of the forgiveness score, the square of the consistency score,and then the interaction term (forgiveness � consistency). If con-sistency moderated the relation between personality and forgive-ness, then the interaction terms would be significant in the

Table 2Zero order correlations between the HEXACO’s facet scales and various forgiveness measures

HEXACO-PI Facet scales TNTF TTF TFS HFS (self) HFS (other) HFS (situation)

Honesty–HumilitySincerity .08 .12 .25** .07 .15* .18**

Fairness .19* .16* .34** .02 .18* .12Greed Avoidance .31** .31** .40** .19* .28** .26**

Modesty .21** .14 .28** .11 .27** .24**

EmotionalityFearfulness �.15* �.25** �.12 �.09 �.12 �.27**

Anxiety �.35** �.38** �.34** �.34** �.29** �.48**

Dependence �.16* �.26** .01 �.00 .06 �.16*

Sentimentality �.04 �.19* .05 �.02 .07 �.07

ExtraversionExpressiveness �.14 �.14 �.10 .12 �.03 .04Social Boldness �.13 .01 .04 .16* .02 .15Sociability �.08 .03 .18* .02 .17* .12Liveliness .03 .35** .27** .27** .28* .35**

AgreeablenessForgiveness .53** .72** .75** .30** .68** .49**

Gentleness .31** .40** .49** .12 .36** .33**

Flexibility .20** .39** .42** .23** .40** .29**

Patience .35** .54** .55** .24** .57** .42**

ConscientiousnessOrganization .01 �.05 .05 .00 .01 .05Diligence .10 .09 .20** .15* .17* .25**

Perfectionism �.13 �.14 .00 �.08 �.03 �.11Prudence .07 .16* .22** .22** .26** .12

Openness to exp.Aesthetic apprec. .08 .01 .07 .18* .09 .12Inquisitiveness .07 .07 .09 .14 .06 .15*

Creativity .11 �.03 .04 .16* .06 .07Unconventionality �.03 �.04 .05 .08 �.00 .03

Aesthetic apprec. = aesthetic appreciation.* p < .05.** p < .01 (two tailed).

Table 3The relationship between the HEXACO-PI and various trait forgiveness measures

H E X A C O R2

r b r b r b r b r b r b

TNTF .28** .15 * (.21**) �.24** �.14* (�.18*) �.10 �.14 * (�.12) .46** .38** (.27**) .01 �.04 (�.03) .11 .11 (.06) .27 (.22)TTF .26** .04 (.12) �.36** �.25** (�.31**) .05 .00 (.03) .68** .62** (.48**) .01 .00 (.01) .01 .01 (�.11) .52 (.42)TFS .45** .19** (.27**) �.13* �.02 (�.07) .13* .08 (.12*) .73** .64** (.50**) .15* .08 (.08) .06 �.04 (�.03) .57 (.46)HFS (self) .14* .05 (.08) �.15* �.09 (�.11) .18** .15* (.16*) .29** .21** (.17*) .09 .08 (.09) .20** .14 (.14) .15 (.14)HFS (other) .30** .04 (.12) �.09 .04 (�.01) .14* .08 (.11) .67** .65** (.51**) .12 .07 (.08) .08 .00 (.01) .46 (.35)HFS (situation) .28** .15* (.19**) �.33** �.27** (�.30**) .21** .19** (.21**) .50** .36** (.30**) .10 .10 (.11) .14* .01 (.01) .36 (.34)

H = Honesty–Humility; E = Emotionality; X = Extraversion; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; O = Openness to experience.* p < .05.** p < .01 (two tailed).

Table 4Frequency distribution for the self-rated traitedness item

S. no. My likelihood of forgiving someone. . . Frequency Percentage

1 Always depends on the situation 40 22.52 Mostly depends on the situation 90 50.63 Somewhat depends on the situation 31 17.44 Rarely depends on the situation 10 5.65 Never depends on the situation 0 0.0

Total 171 100.0

392 S. Shepherd, K. Belicki / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 389–394

direction that highly consistent individuals would show a strongerrelation between personality and forgiveness. However, no signif-icant interactions in the predicted direction were found.

4. Discussion

Firstly, Agreeableness emerged as the single most powerful pre-dictor of trait forgiveness in our sample. These findings are similarto those of past studies that have consistently found this relation-ship. Furthermore, the HEXACO’s Agreeableness factor seems tohave benefited from gaining the temperamentalness and irritabil-ity content that is usually found in the Neuroticism factor of theBig Five Model. Because of this shift in content, Emotionality wasnot nearly as powerful a predictor of forgiveness as neuroticismhas been in past studies (Mullet et al., 2005). This suggests that irri-tability and temperamentalness especially prevent forgiveness, asthese traits may lead to the reemergence of negative emotions to-ward a transgressor, thus hindering the development of positiveemotions.

S. Shepherd, K. Belicki / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 389–394 393

For the Emotionality factor, as predicted, the anxiety facet wasthe strongest predictor of forgiveness among the Emotionalityfacets. Therefore, it appears that excessive worrying about diffi-culties can prevent one from overcoming negative emotions,and thus act as a barrier to forgiveness. This might include wor-rying about one’s relationship with a transgressor, or mentallyreplaying the transgression. In addition, the fearfulness facet (sen-sitivity to physical pain) and the dependence facet (need for emo-tional support) were occasionally and differentially related to traitforgiveness across the various measures. Therefore, those who aresensitive to physical pain may be especially hurt by physicaltransgressions, and thus less likely to forgive, while those who re-quire considerable amounts of emotional support may not forgiveas often as those who are self-assured and can deal with prob-lems on their own.

As predicted, Honesty–Humility was consistently related to for-giveness across all measures, but was only a unique predictor forscores on a few of the forgiveness measures. However, it was alsofound that Honesty–Humility accounted for more variance in traitforgiveness when the forgiveness facet of Agreeableness wasexcluded from analysis, further suggesting that a meaningfulrelationship may exist between Honesty–Humility and traitforgiveness. There seems to be a number of reasons for this rela-tionship, including Honesty–Humility’s connection to prosocialbehaviour (Ashton et al., 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2004), its negativerelationship with narcissistic and exploitative behaviour (Lee &Ashton, 2005), and its modesty-related content.

As was already mentioned, the relationship between Honesty–Humility and forgiveness may be partly influenced by the amountof vengeance-seeking content that resides within a given forgive-ness measure. This was predicted, in part, based on Peruginiet al.’s (2003) finding that fairness/non-exploitation (which is con-ceptually similar to Honesty–Humility) is negatively related toseeking repayment for harmful transgressions. The current studyprovided some evidence for this prediction. It should be men-tioned, however, that there are mixed opinions regarding whetheror not vengeance-related content should be included in forgivenessmeasures. Some researchers have treated forgiveness and ven-geance as opposite ends of the same dimension (Mullet, Houdbine,Laumonier, & Girard, 1998), whereas others have treated them asseparate constructs (Brose et al., 2005; Brown, 2003; McCullough& Hoyt, 2002). While resolving this issue is beyond the scope ofthe current study, it remains that various forgiveness measures in-clude differing amounts of vengeance-related content. Therefore, ifvengeance and non-forgiveness are truly distinct constructs, thenit may be the case that certain forgiveness measures are confound-ing one’s proneness to seek vengeance with non-forgiveness. Inany case, it appears that a stable relationship between Honesty–Humility and forgiveness exists, regardless of whether or not ven-geance is simply a significant barrier to forgiveness, or is in fact theopposite pole of the trait forgiveness dimension.

Extraversion also showed some significant correlations with thevarious forgiveness measures. The current study found that thelargest contributor to this relationship was the liveliness facet.Thus, it appears that being more optimistic and feeling positiveemotions promotes forgiving behaviour. The correlation betweensociability and forgiveness was not very consistent in the currentstudy, as is the case in past research (see Mullet et al., 2005).

While not predicted, positive correlations between forgivenessand the prudence and diligence facets of Conscientiousness werefound. This suggests that inhibitory self-control and self-discipline(as reflected in the prudence and diligence facets, respectively) canpromote forgiveness. Therefore, as suggested by McCullough et al.(1997), it is likely that those who inhibit impulsive behaviours areless likely to act rashly and jeopardize the forgiveness process. Inregards to the diligence facet, perhaps being self-disciplined and

hard working can sometimes translate into making an effort tomaintain relationships.

Based on the aforementioned results, it is apparent that despitesome commonalities, the various forgiveness measures do not sitin the same location within the ‘‘HEXACO space”, thus suggestingthat not all of these forgiveness measures are capturing the sameconcept. Perhaps most striking is how different the HFS (forgive-ness of self) is from the other forgiveness measures in terms ofhow it relates to the HEXACO. The HEXACO accounted for muchless variance in scores on the forgiveness of self subscale than itdid for the other forgiveness measures, even when the forgivenessfacet of Agreeableness was included in the analyses. This providesfurther evidence to suggest that forgiveness of self is conceptuallyvery different from forgiveness of others. Our data suggest thatforgiveness of self is hindered by worrying and experiencingstress, and assisted by feeling enthusiasm and high spirits (as re-flected in the anxiety and liveliness facets of the HEXACO,respectively).

Turning to the findings regarding consistency, most participantsstated that their forgiveness was contingent on the situation. Thisresult supports the notion that while personality traits maybroadly predict a disposition toward forgiveness (as defined by aparticular measure), there are many situational factors that ulti-mately determine whether or not people will forgive an offense.The results of the current study did not support the hypothesis thatmore so-called consistent forgivers would yield stronger correla-tions between selected personality factors and forgiveness. How-ever, our measures of consistency may have limited our ability tofind such a relationship. While using interitem variance to measureconsistency has worked well in some studies (Baumeister & Tice,1988), the forgiveness measures in the current study may not belengthy enough to get an accurate and stable interitem variancescore. It may well be that a more valid measure of consistency isneeded specifically for studying trait forgiveness. In addition, dis-positional measures of forgiveness may simply assess individuals’self concept around forgiveness and not their actual behaviour.Perhaps a state (or offense specific) measure of forgiveness mightbetter demonstrate any moderating effect of consistency.

Based on the plethora of research that exists on trait forgive-ness, it appears that the field should focus its attention on isolatingvarious traits, motivations, and goals that mediate/moderate therelationships that are found in studies such as this one. While cer-tain personality traits may be associated with forgiving behaviour,future research needs to investigate which traits are most relevantto certain situations and kinds of offences. Furthermore, specialconsideration needs to be given to the actual content of each for-giveness measure when it is used, and what that content is assess-ing, as various trait forgiveness measures conceptualize traitforgiveness differently.

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