Honesty Humility In The Big Five Factor example essay topic

770 words
Kevin S chil Psychology 101 The article Personality and the Likelihood to Sexual Harass is an article about three psychologists using descriptive research to try to link a mans personality with the likelihood to sexually harass a female employee. The psychologists names are Kibe om Lee, Marie Gizzarone and Michael C. Ashton. The three thought this would be easy because one of the most common forms of aggressive behavior at work is sexual harassment. They surveyed a group of men to analyze their different personalities and to put the into groups based on who is more or less likely to sexually harass a woman. To determine their personalities that related to sexual harassment they used to measure the Likelihood to Sexual Harass (LSH).

They also used the Big Five factors and a newer major dimension, named Honesty -- Humility to represent the subjects personalities. The LSH scale has ten different given scenarios that puts the subject in a position where he has power over an attractive female subordinate. On a scale 1 to 10, one being least likely and ten being most likely, subjects were asked to rate themselves more or less likely to engage in acts of sexual harassment. It has been proven that high LSH scorers are more likely to sexually harass women than low scorers. Also high and low LSH scorers interact differently with women. The LSH also gives an estimate of the males social cognitive process.

The psychologists were worried that using the LSH scale in such an organized way would throw off the numbers. The three believe that any past results founded for LSH is premature. It is suggested to get an accurate result one must take into consideration the sixth factor. The sixth factor, Honest -- Humility, is defined by words that suggest sincerity and trustworthiness rather than deceit, greed, and conceit. Ashton thinks that the sixth dimension represents differences in a reluctance rather than a willingness to exploit others. Recruitment advertisements were placed throughout the University of Western Australia as well as throughout the community for male participants.

The participants were asked to bring along a male friend who they have know for at least five months. Each of them were paid $10 to participate. They completed a self-rating questionnaire that was measured for personality as well as LSH. They were then asked to complete a peer report questionnaire which was only measured for personality. There were 150 participants who were asked to take the questionnaires. The majority of participants were of European descent and were around the age of 23 years of age.

Also about 74% were from a University. Fifty-five of the one hundred and fifty participants had scores of 1.00 for the LSH measurements and the rest of the 150 participants were scattered. The highest result was found within the Honesty -- Humility dimension for both self and peer reports. This means that Honesty -- Humility contributed independently to the prediction of LSH in both self and peer reports. Intellect / Imagination added to the prediction of the peer reports.

Agreeableness did not contribute to either self or peer reports. They classified the participants as low, medium, and high LSH categories. Men with low LSH scored 1's for all ten questions. Men with high LSH scored 10's for all ten questions and the rest who scores were scattered are considered medium LSH. According to this 55 men were low LSH, 70 men were medium, and 25 were high LSH. The most important thing that the three got out of this study was the finding of a strong negative relation with LSH and Honesty -- Humility.

This demonstrates the importance of including Honesty -- Humility in the Big Five factor as it has show such a large impact. Honesty -- Humility was the only one that really stood out when relating to LSH, which leads them to assume that it is necessary to include Honesty -- Humility when testing personality. I enjoyed reading this article. It was exciting to see how through this Method you can start out with the intention to solve one thing and stumble upon something completely different as they did with Honesty -- Humility.

I think that there is still a lot of testing that needs to be done before they can actually determine Honesty -- Humility to be of great importance and significance to the Big Five factors.