IPIP-HEXACO
Sincerity
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 Sincerity 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 Sincerity Scale (H-Sinc)
The IPIP-HEXACO Sincerity scale (H:Sinc) is a public-domain personality measurement instrument developed within the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) framework by Ashton, Lee, and Goldberg (2007) as a freely available alternative to the proprietary HEXACO Personality Inventory. Sincerity is the first facet of the Honesty-Humility dimension, measuring the degree to which individuals present themselves authentically versus strategically across social contexts. The scale captures variance in flattery use, role-playing behavior, loyalty consistency, and the tendency to tell people what they want to hear in order to achieve personal goals.
The Sincerity facet emerged from cross-cultural lexical studies in which honesty-related personality descriptors consistently clustered into a distinct sixth factor not captured by the Big Five model. The IPIP representation, drawn from the larger International Personality Item Pool developed by Lewis Goldberg, provides an open-access operationalization of this construct with a reported Cronbach's alpha of .81, indicating strong internal consistency. Items span the spectrum from passive impression management to active flattery and strategic loyalty shifts, ensuring broad construct coverage across the authenticity dimension.
Sincerity vs. NEO-PI-R Agreeableness (A): Key Differences
| Feature | IPIP-HEXACO Sincerity (H-Sinc) | NEO-PI-R Agreeableness (A) |
|---|---|---|
| Core Construct | Authentic vs. strategic self-presentation | Cooperative interpersonal behavior |
| Item Count | 10 items (IPIP-HEXACO) | No dedicated facet in Big Five |
| Access | Public domain — free any use | Proprietary, requires license |
| Alpha Reliability | .81 (Ashton et al., 2007) | Varies by NEO version |
Facet Position Within the HEXACO Model
The Sincerity facet (H-Sinc) 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 = .81) 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 Sincerity (H-Sinc) scale specifically provides a standardized academic baseline for the sincerity 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 — Sincerity Scale (H-Sinc)
Is being too sincere actually a weakness in competitive workplaces?
Research shows sincerity is rarely a long-term liability, though it can cost short-term tactical advantages. Highly sincere individuals consistently build stronger reputational trust with colleagues and leaders over time, which compounds into career benefits that impression managers rarely sustain. The exception is specific high-stakes negotiation contexts where strategic ambiguity has genuine value — and most sincere people can learn to apply selective restraint without abandoning their baseline authenticity.
Why do some genuinely honest people still come across as fake online?
Digital body language research explains this clearly. Sincerity in face-to-face interaction is carried largely by non-verbal cues — tone, micro-expressions, eye contact — that largely disappear in text and email. A genuinely authentic person with underdeveloped written communication skills can read as performative or flat online simply because their authenticity isn't visible in the channel. Learning to signal warmth in writing is a distinct skill from being sincere, and developing it is entirely possible.
Can someone who scores low on sincerity genuinely change that pattern over time?
Personality facet research is genuinely hopeful here. Impression management habits respond particularly well to cognitive restructuring approaches that examine the underlying beliefs driving the behaviour — usually a fear that authentic self-presentation is socially dangerous. Change isn't about willpower; it's about understanding why the strategic presentation felt necessary in the first place and building evidence that authenticity is safe in specific contexts.
Does the sincerity trait overlap with what people call authentic leadership?
Substantially yes. Authentic leadership theory emphasises behavioural consistency between espoused values and actions — which maps directly onto the sincerity construct. The additional dimension authentic leadership adds is self-awareness of one's own values and emotions, which sincerity alone doesn't capture. The HEXACO Sincerity facet is best understood as one key component of authentic leadership — the behavioural consistency piece — rather than the full construct.
Does this scoring engine replace a formal professional or character evaluation?
No. The IPIP-HEXACO Sincerity scoring engine is a self-reflection worksheet for educational and academic baseline purposes only. It does not produce formal conclusions about character, professional conduct, or interpersonal behaviour, and cannot substitute for evaluation by a qualified professional. Any formal assessment of individual integrity or professional conduct requires qualified professional oversight and appropriate validated instruments.