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Openness to experience

Openness to experience is one of five major domains of personality discovered by psychologists. Openness involves active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity. A great deal of psychometric research has demonstrated that these qualities are statistically correlated. Thus, openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of a set of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.

Openness tends to be normally distributed with a small number of individuals scoring extremely high or low on the trait, and most people scoring near the average. People who score low on openness are considered to be closed to experience. They tend to be conventional and traditional in their outlook and behavior. They prefer familiar routines to new experiences, and generally have a narrower range of interests. They could be considered practical and down to earth.

People who are open to experience are no different in mental health from people who are closed to experience. There is no relationship between openness and neuroticism, or any other measure of psychological wellbeing. Being open and closed to experience are simply two different ways of relating to the world.

Measurement

The NEO PI-R personality test measures six facets or subsets of openness to experience:

Fantasy - the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life
Aesthetics - the tendency to appreciate art, music, and poetry
Feelings - being receptive to inner emotional states and valuing emotional experience
Actions - the inclination to try new activities, visit new places, and try new foods
Ideas - the tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas
Values - the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and political values

Openness has also been measured, along with all the other Big Five personality traits, on Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool (IPIP). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) measures the preference of "intuition," which is related to openness to experience.

Psychological aspects

Openness to experience correlates with creativity, as measured by tests of divergent thinking. Openness is also associated with crystallized intelligence, but not fluid intelligence. These mental abilities may come more easily when people are dispositionally curious and open to learning. However, openness is only weakly related to general intelligence. Openness to experience is related to need for cognition, a motivational tendency to think about ideas, scrutinize information, and enjoy solving puzzles.

There are social and political implications to this personality trait. People who are highly open to experience tend to be politically liberal and tolerant of diversity. As a consequence, they are generally more open to different cultures and lifestyles. They are lower in ethnocentrism and right-wing authoritarianism.

Genetics and physiology

Openness to experience, like the other traits in the five factor model, is believed to have a genetic component. Identical twins (who have the same DNA) show similar scores on openness to experience, even when they have been adopted into different families and raised in very different environments. One genetic study with 86 subjects found Openness to experience related to the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism associated with the serotonin transporter gene.

Higher levels of Openness have been linked to activity in the ascending dopaminergic system and the functions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Openness is the only personality trait that correlates with neuropsychological tests of dorsolateral prefrontal cortical function, supporting the link between Openness and IQ.

Geography

People living in the eastern and western parts of the United States tend to score higher on openness to experience than those living in the midwest. The highest average scores on openness are found in the states of New York, Oregon, Massachussetts, Washington, and California. Lowest average scores are found in North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Alabama, and Wisconsin.

Drug use

Psychologists in the early 1970s used the concept of openness to experience to describe people who are more likely to use marijuana. Openness was defined in these studies as high creativity, adventuresomeness, internal sensation novelty seeking, and low authoritarianism. Several studies confirmed that young people who score high on this cluster of traits are more likely to use marijuana. More recent research has replicated this finding using contemporary measures of openness.