How Well Do Big Five Measures Capture HEXACO Scale Variance?

We examined the ability of several Big Five measures to account for variance in HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R) scales and vice versa. Some Big Five measures accounted for more variance in HEXACO Honesty-Humility than did others, but these differences were largely offset by opposing differences in accounting for variance in HEXACO Agreeableness and Emotionality. As a consequence, the various Big Five measures showed similarly large overall deficiencies in accounting for HEXACO scale variance, relative to variance accounted for in Big Five scales by HEXACO-PI-R scales. The results imply that the use of Big Five instead of HEXACO scales entails a large loss of information, about equal to the amount that would be lost by discarding one of the Big Five scales.