Michael C. (Michael C.) is Ashton is a psychology professor at Brock University in St. Catharines. Catharines is a city in the province of Ontario, Canada. His Ph.D. was awarded to him. In 1998, he graduated from the University of Western Ontario.

He undertook some cross-cultural study with Kibeom Lee as a graduate student in the late 1990s to see if the Big Five personality qualities observed in North America could be retrieved in other cultures. They discovered that there were six personality dimensions based on their own study and that of other researchers. The H factor, also known as the Honesty-Humility Factor, was identified and is now one of the six aspects of human personality. He is the author of numerous articles in scientific journals, as well as the co-author with Kibeom Lee of The H Factor of Personality, the second edition of the textbook Individual Differences and Personality.