How Openness Affects Your Behavior

Openness, also often referred to as openness/intellect or open to experience, is one of theBig Five factors of personality. The Big Five theory suggests that personality is composed of five major dimensions. Each dimension represents a continuum, so you can be high, low, or somewhere in the middle with regards to each trait.

People who tend to be high in the trait of openness are more willing to embrace new things, fresh ideas, and novel experiences. They areopen-mindedand approach new things with curiosity and tend to seek out novelty. They tend to pursue new adventures, experiences, and creative endeavors. They are also very good at thinking about and making connections between different concepts and ideas.

People who are low on openness, on the other hand, tend to prefer routines, traditions, and familiarity. They approach new things with great caution and prefer consistency. Individuals who are very low on the trait of openness are often seen as being rigid and close-minded. They may find it difficult to cope with changes.

个人很低在这种特征可能错过opportunities to try new things, including changes that could lead to academic or career advancement. Rather than move to a new place to go to a different school or make a career change to find a more rewarding job, they may stick with what is routine and familiar.

Common Characteristics of Openness

According to one definition:

“Openness/Intellect reflects imagination, creativity, intellectual curiosity, and appreciation of esthetic experiences. Broadly, Openness/Intellect relates to the ability and interest in attending to and processing complex stimuli.”

People who are high in this trait are more likely to seek out new experiences. They enjoy things that are new, different, and surprising. They are also more likely to pay attention to their feelings and inner experiences.

People who are high in openness tend to have many of the following characteristics:

• Creative
• Intelligent and knowledgeable
• Give great attention to mental imagery
• Interested in new things
• Enjoys hearing new ideas
• 喜欢思考抽象概念
• Usually more liberal and open to diversity
• Interested in artistic endeavors
• Adventurous

Openness to experience also tends to be correlated to another psychological trait known as absorption, which involves the ability to become immersed in imagination or fantasy. This construct may also be linked to hypnotic susceptibility, or the tendency to be hypnotizable.

Causes

A person's tendency to be either open or closed to experience are likely influenced by both genetics and experience. In psychology, this is often known as the nature or nurture debate. The nature side of the debate argues that certain psychological tendencies are largely caused by heritable factors, while the nurture side of the debate suggests that experience and environmental factors play the most pivotal role.

Twin studies of the Big Five personality traits suggest that heritability accounts for between 40% to 60% of the individual variance in traits. While there is not a great deal of research available on the specific causes of each individual trait, one study found that 21% of differences in openness between individuals was due to heritability. Another study suggested that approximately 10% of the variance in novelty-seeking was due to genetic inheritance.

How Is Openness Measured?

Openness to experience, like the other four factors of personality, is usually measured usingself-report inventories. These questionnaires typically contain a number of statements and people then choose a response that best reflects how much they agree with the statement.

For example, a typical inventory might contain a series of statements similar to the following and respondents then select a response between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree).

The advantage of this type of measurement is that self-reports tend to be very quick and easy to administer. One potential downside, however, is the tendency respondents sometimes have to answer in ways that are more socially desirable. In other instances, people select answers that reflect how they want to see themselves, rather than choose answers that are more reflective of their true behavior.

How Does Openness Influence Behavior?

Openness is often viewed as a positive trait. Open people have a higher level ofintrinsic motivationto pursue knowledge for its own sake. They are curious about the world and want to learn more about how it works. They are also eager to try new things, so they may be better able to adapt and thrive when faced with changes in their environment, situation, or relationships.

This doesn’t mean that openness doesn’t have any downsides. Because people who are high on this trait seek novelty, they may also be more willing to engage in risky behaviors. Interestingly, however, some studies have linked decreased openness to increased risk for drug use.

Creativity

Of the five traits described by the big five theory, openness to experience is the only personality factor that research consistently links tocreativity. People who are high in openness tend to be more creative in general, are more likely to pursue creative achievements, engage in divergent thinking, and take part in creative hobbies.

Learning and Knowledge

Because people with high levels of openness are interested in new things, they are often motivated to learn about new ideas and acquire new knowledge. Research has found that openness to experience is correlated with intelligence as well as what is known as crystallized intelligence. This type of intelligence involves the ability to use all of the facts and knowledge that a person acquires throughout life.

Openness to experience has also been linked to what is known as the need for cognition. The need for cognition is a tendency to pursue activities that necessitate thinking, including thinking about ideas and engaging in mentally complex tasks. People who have a high need for cognition enjoy doing things like solving puzzles, brainstorming solutions to problems, and analyzing ideas.

When listening to an argument, people who are high on cognition tend to focus on aspects of the ideas themselves, where people who are low on this need pay greater attention to things like the likability of the person presenting the argument.

Political Attitudes

Studies have also found that openness is linked to social and political attitudes. People who are high on openness also tend to be more politically liberal. They are more open and accepting toward people of diverse social, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Studies have also found that openness is negatively correlated with right-wing authoritarianism and conservative political views.

However, while openness is linked to certain social and political attitudes, it is important to remember that the development of such beliefs is far more complex than a singular personality trait. While the traditional view has long been that personality traits play a role in the formation of later political attitudes, some research suggests that the correlation between the two may be a result of underlying genetic factors.

Such research suggests that other traits including conscientiousness, the need for order, intolerance of ambiguity, the need for closure, and fear of threats also play an important part in shaping overall political views.

Relationships

Openness can also play a role in relationships. While openness seems to play a less pivotal role than some of the other factors of personality, it has been shown to play an important role with regard to sex. People who are high in openness tend to be more informed about sexual relationships, have a more open attitude toward sex, and have more sexual experiences.

How Common Is Openness?

As with other traits, openness to experience and knowledge represents a continuum. Some people tend to be very high on this trait and some people very low, but the majority of people lie somewhere in the middle. There is little information available on what percentage of people tend to be high, low, or average on this trait.

However, psychologist Robert McCrae, one of the key researchers whose work has contributed to the understanding of the five factors of personality, suggests that openness tends to follow a normal distribution curve, with most people scoring moderately on the trait and a smaller number scoring very high or very low.

McCrae and his colleagues have also found that the five factors tend to vary with age. Although each individual is different, his research suggests that openness to experience peaks around the age of 19. Such findings suggest that while younger people may be more willing to embrace change, this openness to new ideas and experiences may progressively decline as people age.

One study looking at cross-cultural differences in personality traits found that the nation where an individual lived had a statistically significant impact on openness. Results from self-report measures of the Big Five traits found that people from Chile and Belgium rated the highest on openness, while respondents from Japan and Hong Kong ranked the lowest. Regional analysis revealed that East Asia scored lower on openness than all other world regions, while South America scored higher than all other world regions.

A Word From Verywell

开放可以在不同的生活领域中发挥作用e including your creative pursuits, your political ideology, and your attitudes toward sex, among other things. It is important to remember, however, that personality traits such as openness are just one of many factors that shape your life. Personality has been associated with a number of life outcomes including happiness, relationship quality, and job satisfaction, but other factors including circumstances, both situational and societal, also play a critical role.