IPIP-HEXACO
Greed Avoidance
A public-domain personality facet scoring engine
Instructions: For each statement, select the response that best describes how accurately it reflects your typical behavior and attitudes. There are no right or wrong answers. Respond as honestly as possible for the most informative academic baseline.
Scale: 1 = Very Inaccurate · 2 = Moderately Inaccurate · 3 = Neither · 4 = Moderately Accurate · 5 = Very Accurate
Your Greed Avoidance Profile
IPIP-HEXACO · Ashton, Lee & Goldberg (2007) · Public Domain
Facet Interpretation
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Academic Citation
Ashton, M. C., Lee, K., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The IPIP–HEXACO scales: An alternative, public-domain measure of the personality constructs in the HEXACO model. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 1515–1526. doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.02.003
About the IPIP-HEXACO Greed Avoidance Scale (H-Gree)
The IPIP-HEXACO Greed Avoidance scale (H:Gree) is a public-domain personality instrument from the International Personality Item Pool, developed by Ashton, Lee, and Goldberg (2007). This facet measures the degree to which individuals avoid materialistic pursuits, status-seeking behavior, and personal-gain orientation — the lower end of the scale reflecting strong materialism and the higher end reflecting strong greed avoidance. Items cover luxury desire, power motivation, status-seeking, financial focus, and impressiveness goals.
Greed Avoidance emerged from cross-cultural lexical personality research as a consistent component of the Honesty-Humility factor, sharing variance with sincerity, fairness, and modesty while retaining unique predictive validity for consumer behavior and economic attitudes. The IPIP representation reports a Cronbach's alpha of .69, somewhat lower than companion facets due to the breadth of the materialism construct. Research demonstrates that Greed Avoidance independently predicts charitable giving behavior, attitudes toward economic inequality, brand sensitivity, and financial risk-taking across diverse demographic groups.
Greed Avoidance vs. Materialism Scale (Richins & Dawson): Key Differences
| Feature | IPIP-HEXACO Greed Avoidance (H-Gree) | Materialism Scale (Richins & Dawson) |
|---|---|---|
| Core Construct | Materialism & status-seeking avoidance | Terminal materialism values |
| Item Count | 10 items (IPIP-HEXACO) | 18 items (Richins & Dawson, 1992) |
| Access | Public domain — free any use | Academic research use |
| Alpha Reliability | .69 (Ashton et al., 2007) | ~.80–.88 (Richins & Dawson) |
Facet Position Within the HEXACO Model
The Greed Avoidance facet (H-Gree) is one of four facets within the Honesty-Humility (H) dimension of the six-factor HEXACO personality model developed by Michael Ashton and Kibeom Lee. Unlike the Big Five framework, HEXACO adds a sixth dimension — Honesty-Humility — capturing variance in sincere, fair, modest, and non-materialistic behavior that the five-factor model distributes across Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. The IPIP representation of this facet, developed in collaboration with Lewis Goldberg and the International Personality Item Pool project, provides researchers with an openly licensed operationalization that achieves internal consistency (alpha = .69) comparable to the proprietary HEXACO-PI-R while remaining entirely free for academic, organizational, and educational deployment.
Research and Applied Utility
Researchers and students in personality psychology, organizational behavior, and educational research regularly use the IPIP-HEXACO facet scales as targeted instruments for hypothesis testing, survey battery supplementation, and educational self-reflection activities. Because the IPIP scales are public domain, they may be embedded in any survey platform, online tool, or research system without licensing restrictions. The Greed Avoidance (H-Gree) scale specifically provides a standardized academic baseline for the greed avoidance construct within the Honesty-Humility domain, enabling comparison with published normative data from the Ashton, Lee, and Goldberg (2007) validation study. The scale has been applied in cross-cultural research across more than 35 countries, providing researchers with substantial normative reference material.
Frequently Asked Questions — Greed Avoidance Scale (H-Gree)
Is wanting luxury and status genuinely bad for your mental health?
The research is nuanced. Materialistic orientation itself isn't predictive of distress — but placing money and status as terminal goals (ends in themselves rather than means to other ends) is what consistently undermines wellbeing. People who want material comfort to enable freedom, security, or family wellbeing show very different psychological outcomes from those chasing status purely for its social signal value. The goal content matters far more than the goal level.
Why does the HEXACO model place greed inside the honesty dimension?
This is one of the most conceptually interesting aspects of the model. Ashton and Lee's research showed that materialism, status-seeking, and self-serving motivation cluster with deceptive and unfair behaviour across cultures — they share an underlying orientation toward prioritising personal gain over collective fairness. Greed avoidance is essentially the motivational substrate of the Honesty-Humility dimension: when you are not primarily driven by personal gain, you have less reason to deceive or exploit others to get it.
Can someone be genuinely ambitious and still score high on greed avoidance?
Absolutely — and this distinction is one the HEXACO model captures better than most personality frameworks. Ambition driven by mastery, impact, or contribution is fundamentally different from ambition driven by status acquisition and material gain. High greed avoidance individuals frequently achieve significant career and creative success; they simply aren't primarily motivated by the status signals that accompany it. Purpose-driven ambition and greed avoidance coexist comfortably.
How does financial stress interact with this personality trait?
Research on economic stress and materialism shows a bidirectional relationship. Chronic financial insecurity can activate and strengthen materialistic orientation as an adaptive response — when resources feel precarious, pursuing money and status becomes more psychologically urgent. This means greed avoidance scores can shift somewhat across economically stressful life periods and should be interpreted against the person's current financial context.
Does this greed avoidance profile replace a formal values or motivational assessment?
No. The IPIP-HEXACO Greed Avoidance scoring engine is an educational tool based on public-domain personality research, intended solely for academic self-reflection and baseline awareness. It does not provide formal analysis of values, career orientation, or personal motivation. Formal values or motivational assessment in coaching, educational, or occupational contexts requires a qualified professional and appropriate validated instruments.