Openness
Openness to experience is the Big Five trait for curiosity about ideas, art, feelings and new things. People toward one end are drawn to the new and the complex. People toward the other prefer the familiar and the practical, and that's a style with its own strengths.
- The two ends: Practical and concrete, to curious and imaginative.
- Intellect: Taking an interest in abstract ideas and working things out.
- Openness: Taking an interest in art, beauty, fantasy and feelings.
- In the free test: Called Intellect or Imagination. Seven statements count toward the curious end and three toward the practical end.
Painters and physicists
Split this trait in two and the halves behave differently. Researchers call the two sides, or aspects, Intellect and Openness.1,2 Across four samples of 1,035 people, the openness side predicted creative achievement in the arts, and the intellect side predicted it in the sciences.3
The split also explains the trait's many names. Lewis Goldberg's version, the one our free test uses, is called Intellect or Imagination.4 Other tests call it Openness to Experience.
What the free test asks
Our free personality test scores openness with these 10 IPIP statements, each with "I" in front.4 You answer from 1 to 5, and the three on the practical side count in reverse.
| Statement | Agreeing counts toward |
|---|---|
| I have a rich vocabulary. | Curious end |
| I have difficulty understanding abstract ideas. | Practical end |
| I have a vivid imagination. | Curious end |
| I am not interested in abstract ideas. | Practical end |
| I have excellent ideas. | Curious end |
| I do not have a good imagination. | Practical end |
| I am quick to understand things. | Curious end |
| I use difficult words. | Curious end |
| I spend time reflecting on things. | Curious end |
| I am full of ideas. | Curious end |
Why an artist can score low here
Read the ten together. Vocabulary, abstract ideas, difficult words, understanding things quickly: most of them sit on the intellect side.
Two mention imagination. None mentions art, music or feelings.
Paint every weekend, have no patience for abstract debate, and this scale may place you lower than a test built around the arts would, and the gap says more about the questions than about you.
Curious minds, and quick learners
Openness was the trait that went with divergent thinking, the skill of producing many different answers to one question, in a study of 268 men; none of the other four traits did.5
It shows up in learning, too. Across occupations, openness predicted how well people did in job training.6 In school and university it went with better grades, alongside agreeableness and conscientiousness.7
Across a life, openness climbs through the teenage years and drops back in old age.8 Its link to anxiety and depression is weak: a review of 175 studies found the two largely unrelated.9
Octopus articles and fixed shelves
Near the curious end, an idea is worth chasing for its own sake. You follow the tangent, read the second article, look for a new way to do a familiar job. The price is boredom with routine and a drawer of half-started interests.
Near the practical end, attention goes to what works and what's in front of you. A proven method gets trusted, and the job gets finished with it. The price is passing on a new approach that would have saved an afternoon.
Most people land in between, curious about some things and content with the familiar for others, and the bar in the test shows exactly where.
"I lost two hours reading about how octopuses think, then started sketching one." (toward the curious end)
"I finally fixed the loose shelf, and that felt like the best use of my Saturday." (toward the practical end)
What is something new you tried this year? What made you willing to try it, or what almost stopped you?
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about openness
Is openness to experience a Big Five trait?
Yes, it's the fifth factor. In research it also goes by Openness/Intellect, and in the item set this site uses it's Intellect or Imagination.2,4
Is openness the same as intelligence?
No. Openness describes what draws your attention, and intelligence is how well you reason. In the four samples above, the link between the intellect side and science achievement may have come partly from reasoning ability and divergent thinking, which the researchers measured as well.3
Is it better to be high in openness?
Neither end wins outright. High openness goes with creative thinking and with doing well in job training.5,6 Neither end is linked to anxiety or depression.9 Which one serves you depends on the task.
Related
- Know yourself: the section hub.
- Free personality test: see where you fall on all five traits.
- Conscientiousness and extraversion: two of the other four traits.