Concept of indecisiveness within the HEXACO personality framework

Abstract

Background: Decision making is one of the basic human activities. Indecisiveness, i.e. the stable tendency towards not making decisions in a timely manner, may influence the quality and speed in decision making and have long-term consequences for our professional and personal life. The goal of this research was to examine the position of indecisiveness within the HEXACO model of personality, at both the broad domains and narrow facets level. A secondary goal was to translate the Frost & Shows Indecisiveness Scale (IS) into the Croatian language and examine its validity and reliability. Participants and Procedure: An internet-based sample size of 296 participants filled in both short and long version of Indecisiveness Scale and the HEXACO-PI-R. Results: The results show that the IS retains the original one-factor structure as proposed by the original authors and has a high reliability. The shortened version shows properties very similar to the longer version and is deemed an appropriate replacement. Extraversion showed the highest positive correlation with indecisiveness, followed by negative correlations with conscientiousness, emotionality and agreeableness. Conclusions: The Croatian translation of the IS is a valid and reliable measure. The results also confirm that the shortened 11-item version can be used as a replacement for the full 15-item version. Since there was no measure of indecisiveness in Croatian before, this instrument could be used in the future by researchers interested in this construct. It was shown that extraversion has the strongest relationship with indecisiveness, followed by conscientiousness, emotionality and agreeableness.