Openness to experience
One of the Big Five. Called intellect or imagination in the 50-item markers.
Openness to experience is the breadth of a person's appetite for ideas, art, feelings, novelty and variety. People high on it are curious and imaginative and like the unfamiliar; people low on it prefer the practical, the proven and the plain. It is the trait that most reliably separates people who seek out the new from people who are content with what works.
What it does not mean
It is not intelligence. The scale asks what people enjoy and how they see themselves, not how well they think, and the overlap with measured ability is modest. Nor is a low score a lack of imagination in any useful sense: practical people solve problems every day, they just do not describe themselves as dreamers.
It is not a measure of being open-minded in the everyday sense of fair or tolerant. A person can be high on openness and stubborn, or low on it and generous to other views.
High and low in daily life
High. People high on openness say they have a vivid imagination, love to read challenging material, see beauty where others do not, prefer variety to routine and experience their emotions intensely. In daily life that shows as a wide range of interests, a taste for art, music and ideas, boredom with repetition, and a readiness to question conventions, including political ones.
Low. People low on openness say they prefer to stick with what they know, dislike changes, avoid philosophical discussions and have little interest in art museums or poetry. In daily life that shows as settled habits, practical judgement, a liking for clear rules and familiar places, and impatience with speculation. Many low scorers are expert at the concrete work they have chosen.
Facets
- Imagination: how much a person lives in fantasy and daydream rather than only in the concrete present.
- Artistic interests: liking for art, music, poetry and beauty.
- Emotionality: how strongly feelings are experienced and noticed.
- Adventurousness: preference for variety and new experiences over routine.
- Intellect: enjoyment of ideas, abstract discussion and challenging reading.
- Liberalism: readiness to question convention and authority.
What the research says it predicts
Across the Big Five, openness has the weakest links to health, work and relationship outcomes; its clearest correlates are political attitudes, creative and artistic pursuits, and the breadth of a person's interests. (Ozer and Benet-MartÃnez, 2006)
In a pre-registered replication of 78 trait-outcome links, those involving openness replicated at about the same rate as the others, with small effects. (Soto, 2019)
Openness rises in young adulthood and falls a little in old age, on average. (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer, 2006)
Where people fall
The spread of scores
Curve height shows how common each score is; the darker middle holds half of all people. If you have taken a test on this device, your marker is drawn on.
IPIP-NEO-120, openness, 24 items
410,376 people
IPIP-50, intellect or imagination, 10 items
603,322 people
The other traits
Guides that cover this
Sources and licence
Ozer, D. J., & Benet-MartÃnez, V. (2006). Personality and the prediction of consequential outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401-421. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190127
Soto, C. J. (2019). How replicable are links between personality traits and consequential life outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project. Psychological Science, 30(5), 711-727. doi:10.1177/0956797619831612
Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1-25. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1
Instrument: IPIP-NEO-120. Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003 Key: https://ipip.ori.org/30FacetNEO-PI-RItems.htm.
Norms: Johnson, J. A. IPIP-NEO-120 public dataset (IPIP120.dat), OSF component wxvth of osf.io/tbmh5, https://osf.io/wxvth/.
Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm
Instrument: IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers. Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42. doi:10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26 Key: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm.
Norms: Open-Source Psychometrics Project, IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers responses (IPIP-FFM-data-8Nov2018.zip), 1,015,342 responses collected 2016 to 2018, https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/.
Licence: Public domain (IPIP). Permission is granted automatically for any person to use IPIP items for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm