Benjamin E Hilbig
Biographic Data
| ID | 195402 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin E Hilbig |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin E |
| FAMILY NAME | Hilbig |
| SIGNATURE | HILBIG B E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Koblenz and Landau |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1470-1882 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Sign a petition or storm the parliament? Aversive personality differentiates normative vs. nonnormative political activism
Past research on political activism has largely emphasized the role of intra personal developments. One prominent example is the so-called ‘conveyor belt’ metaphor, suggesting that political activism typically begins with normative political activism (NPA) – such as signing petitions – but can eventually escalate into nonnormative political activism (NNPA), eg violent protests. However, theoretical developments in the realm of socially and/or eth…
Aversive Personality and the Moral Mind: Cross-Cultural Links Between the D-Factor and Moral Foundations
Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) proposes that moral judgements arise from distinct yet universal psychological systems, shaped by multiple factors such as social learning. Personality traits also shape (and are shaped by) moral priorities. Prior research linking socially aversive traits to moral foundations has yielded heterogeneous and often contradictory results, likely due to trait-specific approaches and culturally limited samples. The present…
Seeing the World Through a Dark Lens: The Dark Core of Personality and Its Relation to Primal World Beliefs
OBJECTIVE: Aversive ("dark") personality traits are traditionally studied as predictors of harmful or manipulative behavior, yet their underlying cognitive-affective structures remain underexplored. This research investigates whether the Dark Core of personality (D)-the common aversive essence of all dark traits-is associated with primal world beliefs, which are deep-seated assumptions about the nature of the world (e.g., viewing the world as saf…
Cheat, cheat, repeat: On the consistency of dishonest behavior in structurally comparable situations
1,916) and demographically diverse sample. Dishonest behavior was measured three times-up to 3 years apart-using different variants of well-established, incentivized cheating paradigms. A key advantage of these paradigms is that lying is individually profitable but not self-incriminating. Besides varying the specific task at hand, we experimentally varied the nature of incentives (i.e., money vs. avoiding tedious work) as well as their magnitude …
Cheating to benefit others? On the relation between Honesty‐Humility and prosocial lies
OBJECTIVE: Among basic personality traits, Honesty-Humility yields the most consistent, negative link with dishonest behavior. The theoretical conceptualization of Honesty-Humility, however, suggests a potential boundary condition of this relation, namely, when lying is prosocial. We therefore tested the hypothesis that the association between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty weakens once lying benefits someone else, particularly so if this other …
Testing the equivalence of the aversive core of personality and a blend of agreeableness(‐related) items
OBJECTIVE: There is an ongoing debate in personality research whether the common core of aversive ("dark") traits can be approximated by or even considered equivalent to one of the constructs that have been labeled "Agreeableness". In particular, it has been suggested that the low pole of (what we term) AG+, a broad blend of Big Five Agreeableness and the HEXACO factors Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, and Altruism, is essentially equivalent to t…
Basic personality and actual criminal convictions
Crime is an issue with severe consequences for individuals, economies, and society at large. Developing effective crime prevention strategies requires a clear understanding of who is likely to engage in crime and why. A promising approach in this regard likely is integrating established criminological theories with established models of basic personality structure. Correspondingly, the present investigation derives hypotheses from three criminolo…
How and why aversive personality is expressed in political preferences
Political orientation reflects beliefs, opinions, and values that are, at least in part, rooted in stable interindividual differences. Whereas evidence has accumulated with regard to the relevance of basic personality dimensions, especially concerning the sociocultural dimension of political ideology, less attention has been paid to the more specific dispositional tendency to assign a higher weight to one's own utility above others' (i.e., social…
The role of impulse and interference control in aversive personality: A comprehensive assessment
Ethically and socially aversive behaviors have been attributed to several personality traits, including characteristics collectively referred to under the umbrella term of impulsivity. It is an open question, however, whether such characteristics are an integral part of ethically and socially aversive personality. Relying on three large samples (total N = 9854) and implementing longitudinal assessments, the present study provides a comprehensive …
Rethinking aversive personality: Decomposing the Dark Triad traits into their common core and unique flavors
OBJECTIVE: To explain and predict unethical behavior, much attention has been devoted to the "Dark Triad of Personality", a set of three socially aversive personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. Despite its popularity, research on the Dark Triad has been beset by recurring concerns surrounding the distinctiveness of its components. Herein, we propose an alternative theoretical view that conceptualizes the Dark Triad tra…
Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality
Populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories fuel societal division as both rely on a Manichean us‐versus‐them, good‐versus‐evil narrative. However, whether both constructs have the same dispositional roots is essentially unknown. Across three studies conducted in two different countries and using diverse samples (total N = 1,888), we show that populism and conspiracy mentality have a strong common core as evidenced using bifactor modeling. This c…
Measuring the Dark Core of Personality in German: Psychometric Properties, Measurement Invariance, Predictive Validity, and Self-Other Agreement
The Dark Factor of Personality (D)—the underlying disposition of aversive traits—has been shown to account for various ethically and socially aversive behaviors. Whereas previous findings support the reliability and validity of the original English item sets suggested to measure D, a thorough psychometric examination of their German translation is still pending. Using data from four different samples (total N > 33,000), this study comprehensively…
Beyond (low) Agreeableness: Toward a more comprehensive understanding of antagonistic psychopathology
In clinical psychopathology research, up to seven traits have been suggested as instances of antagonistic psychopathology. Those antagonistic traits, in turn, are commonly viewed as reflections of low Agreeableness as per the Big Five (BF‐AG). However, specific theoretical differences between antagonistic traits suggest that other broad, basic dimensions beyond BF‐AG ought to provide further points of correspondence. Specifically, whereas primari…
Comparing Teachers' and Students' Perspectives on the Treatment of Student Misbehavior
The treatment of student misbehavior is both a major challenge for teachers and a potential source of students' perceptions of injustice in school. By implication, it is vital to understand teachers' treatment of student misbehavior vis-à-vis students' perceptions. One key dimension of punishment behavior reflects the underlying motives and goals of the punishment. In the present research, we investigated the perspectives of both teachers and stu…
Stability and Change: The Dark Factor of Personality Shapes Dark Traits
The Dark Factor of Personality (D) is conceptualized as the basic disposition out of which “dark” traits arise as specific manifestations. We herein critically test this conceptualization across nine dark traits in a 4-year longitudinal study with N = 1,261 ( n = 470 at the second measurement occasion, employing full information maximum likelihood estimation) adults from the general population. Results strongly support the conceptualization of D.…
Buying Unethical Loyalty: A Behavioral Paradigm and Empirical Test
Unethical behavior is often accompanied by others covering up a transgressor’s actions. We devised a novel behavioral paradigm, the Unethical Loyalty Game (ULG), to study individuals’ willingness to lie to cover up others’ dishonesty. Specifically, we examined (i) whether and to what extent individuals are willing to lie to cover up others’ unethical behavior, (ii) whether this unethical loyalty depends on the benefits (bribe) at stake, and (iii)…
The dark core of personality and socially aversive psychopathology
OBJECTIVE: Although dark traits as studied in mainstream personality research and socially aversive psychopathology as studied in abnormal psychology intend to account for the same classes of behavior, their degree of conceptual and, consequently, empirical correspondence has remained limited at best. We aim to overcome this divide by demonstrating clear convergence between the common core of all dark traits (the Dark Factor of Personality, D) an…
The Dark Factor of Personality and Risk-Taking
Aversive personality traits have been linked to risk-taking across various domains. Herein, we investigated whether the common core of aversive traits, the Dark Factor of Personality (D), is related to risk-taking. Whereas the conceptualizations of D (common core of aversive traits) and risk-taking (not inherently socially and/or ethically aversive) do not necessarily imply an association, several theoretical considerations do suggest a positive …
Agreeableness is dead. Long live Agreeableness? Reply to Vize and Lynam
Theoretical and empirical dissociations between the Dark Factor of Personality and low Honesty-Humility
Measuring the dark core of personality.
The Dark Factor of Personality (D) is the basic disposition that gives rise to specific personality traits related to antagonistic, malevolent, or socially aversive behavior, thereby representing the common core of dark personality traits. Whereas existing evidence clearly supports the conceptualization and utility of D, the assessment of D was possible only indirectly and with extensive effort, so far. Applying rational item selection techniques…
The Nomological Net of the Hexaco Model of Personality: A Large-Scale Meta-Analytic Investigation
Based on lexical studies, the HEXACO (honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience) model of personality has been proposed as a model of basic personality structure that summarizes individual differences in six broad trait dimensions. Although research across various fields relies on the HEXACO model increasingly, a comprehensive investigation of the nomological net of the HEXACO dimen…
Agreeableness and the common core of dark traits are functionally different constructs
Honesty-humility and dictator and ultimatum game-giving in children
On the robustness of the association between Honesty-Humility and dishonest behavior for varying incentives
Pillars of cooperation: Honesty–Humility, social value orientations, and economic behavior
Sad, thus true: Negativity bias in judgments of truth
An effect observable across many different domains is that negative instances tend to be more influential than comparably positive ones. This phenomenon has been termed the negativity bias. In the current work, it was investigated whether this effect pertains to judgments of truth. That is, it was hypothesized that information valence and perceived validity should be associated such that more negative information is deemed more true. This claim w…
Personality and prosocial behavior: Linking basic traits and social value orientations
Concerning the dispositional determinants of prosocial behavior and cooperation, work based on the classic 5 personality factors, and especially Agreeableness, has turned out somewhat inconsistent. A clearer picture has emerged from consideration of the HEXACO model of personality--though supported entirely by hypothetical behavior as criterion, so far. Thus, in 2 studies and a reanalysis, we investigated "actual behavior" in the form of individu…
What lies beneath: How the distance between truth and lie drives dishonesty
Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality
Populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories fuel societal division as both rely on a Manichean us‐versus‐them, good‐versus‐evil narrative. However, whether both constructs have the same dispositional roots is essentially unknown. Across three studies conducted in two different countries and using diverse samples (total N = 1,888), we show that populism and conspiracy mentality have a strong common core as evidenced using bifactor modeling. This c…
Seeing me, seeing you: Testing competing accounts of assumed similarity in personality judgments
A recurrent observation in personality judgments is that individuals' ratings of others' personalities are positively linked to their self-description, and that such "assumed similarity" effects appear to be trait-specific. However, the extent of and explanations for assumed similarity have been addressed only insufficiently. To close this gap, we first provide a meta-analytic summary of evidence on assumed similarity of basic personality traits.…
From personality to altruistic behavior (and back): Evidence from a double-blind dictator game
When the cat’s away, some mice will play: A basic trait account of dishonest behavior
Trust in me, trust in you: A social projection account of the link between personality, cooperativeness, and trustworthiness expectations
Two sides of one coin: Honesty–Humility and situational factors mutually shape social dilemma decision making
No gain without pain: The psychological costs of dishonesty
Altruism at the ballots: Predicting political attitudes and behavior
Theoretical and empirical dissociations between the Dark Factor of Personality and low Honesty-Humility
Agreeableness and the common core of dark traits are functionally different constructs
Defection in the dark? A randomized‐response investigation of cooperativeness in social dilemma games
As previous research has demonstrated numerous times, humans show a robust tendency for cooperation. However, part—or indeed all—of this cooperativeness may be due to socially desirable responding. To address this problem, we propose and apply a new approach for the unbiased measurement of cooperativeness in social dilemma games. Specifically, we employ an extension of the randomized‐response technique (RRT). The RRT protects the privacy of respo…
Agreeableness is dead. Long live Agreeableness? Reply to Vize and Lynam
Honesty-humility and dictator and ultimatum game-giving in children
Is It All About Retribution? The Flexibility of Punishment Goals
Current literature suggests that laypeople's punishment is primarily driven by retributive reasons (i.e., to give offender their just deserts) rather than utilitarian purposes such as special prevention (i.e., to prevent recidivism of the offender) or general prevention (i.e., to prevent the imitation of the crime by others). One explanation for this may be that individuals tend to focus on salient cues while ignoring others when making a decisio…
Openness to (reporting) experiences that one never had: Overclaiming as an outcome of the knowledge accumulated through a proclivity for cognitive and aesthetic exploration
Overclaiming-in which individuals overstate their level of familiarity with items-has been proposed as a potential indicator of positive self-presentation. However, the precise nature and determinants of overclaiming are not well understood. Herein, we provide novel insights into overclaiming through 4 primary studies (comprising 6 samples) and a meta-analysis. Based on past empirical work and theoretical discussions suggesting that overclaiming …
On the robustness of the association between Honesty-Humility and dishonest behavior for varying incentives
Is it all about the money? A re-analysis of the link between Honesty-Humility and Dictator Game giving
The two faces of cooperation: On the unique role of Hexaco Agreeableness for forgiveness versus retaliation
Cheat, cheat, repeat: On the consistency of dishonest behavior in structurally comparable situations
1,916) and demographically diverse sample. Dishonest behavior was measured three times-up to 3 years apart-using different variants of well-established, incentivized cheating paradigms. A key advantage of these paradigms is that lying is individually profitable but not self-incriminating. Besides varying the specific task at hand, we experimentally varied the nature of incentives (i.e., money vs. avoiding tedious work) as well as their magnitude …
Basic personality and actual criminal convictions
Crime is an issue with severe consequences for individuals, economies, and society at large. Developing effective crime prevention strategies requires a clear understanding of who is likely to engage in crime and why. A promising approach in this regard likely is integrating established criminological theories with established models of basic personality structure. Correspondingly, the present investigation derives hypotheses from three criminolo…
How and why aversive personality is expressed in political preferences
Political orientation reflects beliefs, opinions, and values that are, at least in part, rooted in stable interindividual differences. Whereas evidence has accumulated with regard to the relevance of basic personality dimensions, especially concerning the sociocultural dimension of political ideology, less attention has been paid to the more specific dispositional tendency to assign a higher weight to one's own utility above others' (i.e., social…
Individual differences in fast-and-frugal decision making: Neuroticism and the recognition heuristic
Criterion knowledge: A moderator of using the recognition heuristic
The recognition heuristic (RH) claims that people base inferences on recognition only. This has been questioned by several studies which found that additional knowledge was influential. However, in some of these studies, participants' additional knowledge might have encompassed criterion knowledge thus rendering any inferential strategy superfluous. The present study was therefore designed to test the effect of criterion knowledge on use or non‐u…
Pillars of cooperation: Honesty–Humility, social value orientations, and economic behavior
Sad, thus true: Negativity bias in judgments of truth
An effect observable across many different domains is that negative instances tend to be more influential than comparably positive ones. This phenomenon has been termed the negativity bias. In the current work, it was investigated whether this effect pertains to judgments of truth. That is, it was hypothesized that information valence and perceived validity should be associated such that more negative information is deemed more true. This claim w…
Altruism at the ballots: Predicting political attitudes and behavior
Defection in the dark? A randomized‐response investigation of cooperativeness in social dilemma games
As previous research has demonstrated numerous times, humans show a robust tendency for cooperation. However, part—or indeed all—of this cooperativeness may be due to socially desirable responding. To address this problem, we propose and apply a new approach for the unbiased measurement of cooperativeness in social dilemma games. Specifically, we employ an extension of the randomized‐response technique (RRT). The RRT protects the privacy of respo…
What lies beneath: How the distance between truth and lie drives dishonesty
Two sides of one coin: Honesty–Humility and situational factors mutually shape social dilemma decision making
Trust in me, trust in you: A social projection account of the link between personality, cooperativeness, and trustworthiness expectations
Personality and prosocial behavior: Linking basic traits and social value orientations
Concerning the dispositional determinants of prosocial behavior and cooperation, work based on the classic 5 personality factors, and especially Agreeableness, has turned out somewhat inconsistent. A clearer picture has emerged from consideration of the HEXACO model of personality--though supported entirely by hypothetical behavior as criterion, so far. Thus, in 2 studies and a reanalysis, we investigated "actual behavior" in the form of individu…
Honesty and Humility
Trust: An Integrative Review from a Person–Situation Perspective
Trust is a key aspect of various social interactions. Correspondingly, trust has been heavily studied across different scientific disciplines. However, an integration of the diverse research and literature is still missing. Addressing this issue, we review several hundred articles on interpersonal trust among strangers and integrate them into a coherent framework, explaining trust behavior among unfamiliar agents based on an interaction between s…
Truth Will Out: Linking Personality, Morality, and Honesty Through Indirect Questioning
Individual differences in morality and honesty are inherently connected such that individuals more likely to engage in immoral behavior will typically be less likely to admit to it. Indeed, this is a central prediction of the Honesty-Humility (HH) factor of personality, recently proposed as part of the HEXACO Model of Personality (Honesty-Humility [H], Emotionality [E], Extraversion [X], Agreeablenes [A], Conscientiousness [C], and Openness to Ex…
From personality to altruistic behavior (and back): Evidence from a double-blind dictator game
When the cat’s away, some mice will play: A basic trait account of dishonest behavior
Dissociating Indifferent, Directional, and Extreme Responding in Personality Data: Applying the Three‐Process Model to Self‐ and Observer Reports
Research suggests that respondents vary in their tendency to use the response scale of typical (Likert‐style) questionnaires. We study the nature of the response process by applying a recently introduced item response theory modeling procedure, the three‐process model, to data of self‐ and observer reports of personality traits. The three‐process model captures indifferent, directional, and extreme responding. Substantively, we hypothesize that, …
Should Versus Want: On the Relative Contribution of Injunctive Norms and Preferences on Trust Decisions
Despite much research on the determinants of trust among strangers, its mechanisms are understood only rudimentarily. Recently, it has been proposed that people trust strangers because they believe they should, thus complying with an injunctive norm even if it conflicts with their preferences. However, given the boldness of this claim and in light of independent arguments and earlier findings that suggest otherwise, the hypothesis requires critic…
The two faces of cooperation: On the unique role of Hexaco Agreeableness for forgiveness versus retaliation
Openness to (reporting) experiences that one never had: Overclaiming as an outcome of the knowledge accumulated through a proclivity for cognitive and aesthetic exploration
Overclaiming-in which individuals overstate their level of familiarity with items-has been proposed as a potential indicator of positive self-presentation. However, the precise nature and determinants of overclaiming are not well understood. Herein, we provide novel insights into overclaiming through 4 primary studies (comprising 6 samples) and a meta-analysis. Based on past empirical work and theoretical discussions suggesting that overclaiming …
The dark core of personality.
> 2,500), we provide evidence in support of the theoretical conceptualization of D, show that dark traits can be understood as specific manifestations of D, demonstrate that D predicts a multitude of criteria in the realm of ethically, morally, and socially questionable behavior, and illustrate that D does not depend on any particular indicator variable included. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Honest People Tend to Use Less—Not More—Profanity: Comment on Feldman et al.’s (2017) Study 1
This article shows that the conclusion of Feldman et al.’s (2017) Study 1 that profane individuals tend to be honest is most likely incorrect. We argue that Feldman et al.’s conclusion is based on a commonly held but erroneous assumption that higher scores on Impression Management Scales, such as the Lie Scale, are associated with trait dishonesty. Based on evidence from studies that have investigated (1) self-other agreement on Impression Manage…
Is it all about the money? A re-analysis of the link between Honesty-Humility and Dictator Game giving
Daring dishonesty: On the role of sanctions for (un)ethical behavior
Nomological consistency: A comprehensive test of the equivalence of different trait indicators for the same constructs
OBJECTIVE: Across all subfields of psychology, it is common practice to use different indicators of allegedly the same personality constructs, resting upon the (often implicit) assumption that the indicators measure equivalent constructs. However, there is a lack of approaches allowing for a strict and comprehensive test of the equivalence assumption. We propose investigating nomological consistency to test the equivalence assumption across inven…
No gain without pain: The psychological costs of dishonesty
Psychology (49 works) · Social Psychology (49 works) · Personality (36 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (29 works) · Big Five personality traits (24 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (19 works) · Personality Disorders and Psychopathology (16 works) · Honesty (15 works) · Cognitive psychology (13 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (13 works)