Incorporating prosocial vs. antisocial trait content in Big Five measurement: Lessons from the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2)

Abstract

In three studies, we tried to create a novel scale within the existing Big Five Inventory 2 (BFI-2) structure to measure prosocial vs. antisocial personality traits, like the Dark Triad and honesty-humility. While our new scale converged strongly with dark personality and honesty-humility scales, we failed to establish sufficient discriminant validity vis-a-vis the existing BFI-2 agreeableness domain. Instead, we found that dark traits and honesty-humility were best measured as a facet of agreeableness that correlated strongly with other agreeableness facets and established measures of dark traits and honesty-humility. These findings suggest that honesty-humility and dark personality traits can be measured as opposite facets of a broader agreeableness-antagonism continuum when adopting the BFI-2 (Big Five) domain structure.