The Personality Trait That Can Make or Break You

Having an open mind may seem to grant you all kinds of advantages as you make your way through life. Rather than saying “no” to any kind of opportunity, as a closed-minded person might, letting in new ideas and opportunities should help you find new and previously hidden pathways to success.

Perhaps you’ve been offered a ticket from a neighbor to join them for a sporting event, one that holds zero interest to you. The ticket is free, and there’s really no cost involved in your coming along for the evening. After a little internal debate with yourself, you decide to accept.

Fast forward to the game itself. Rather than finding it a complete bore and waste of time, you’ve actually had a lot of fun. Seeing the players in person rather than on a television screen made it exciting to watch, and the general atmosphere was more charged than you could’ve imagined. All in all, you’re glad you took your neighbor up on the offer.

People with a closed mind, in contrast, would have replied with a kind refusal, never giving themselves the chance to take in a new experience. They’d miss out not only on new activities that turn out to be fun, but also remain constrained within their own little worlds.

The Openness to Experience Factor in Personality

When personality researchers embarked on the ambitious task of defining the entire scope of traits or dispositions within all people, they settled on five basic factors, forming the acronym “OCEAN” (or “CANOE”): Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Perhaps the least well-understood of these now, some decades later, is Openness to Experience.

According to Lana Tucaković and Boban Nedeljković of the University of Belgrade (2023), “Openness to Experience is a broad and complex personality trait that describes individual differences in the tendency to be open to new and different experiences in multiple aspects of life.” One of the broadest components of personality, it’s difficult to study because “the trait encompasses divergent constructs” (p. 1).

It's not only the OCEAN or Five Factor Model (FFM) that incorporates personality openness but also the contrasting model known as HEXACO, or six factor (which adds "honesty-humility" to the mix). In both cases, the mystery in understanding personality openness comes from the fact that it involves both intellectual curiosity, if not ability, and a tendency to think outside the box. Someone high on openness might in general be able to take in a bunch of new ideas because they have larger cognitive capacity to organize and sort the information they encounter in their lives.

But the “think different” part of openness could potentially morph into what the Serbian authors call “disintegration,” or “distortions in cognition, emotions, and behavior” (p. 3). When this happens, you’re not just willing to try new things for the sake of mixing things up, but you’re also allowing your mind to wander into places that could cause you to lose touch with what’s going on around you. If you’ve ever daydreamed yourself into a situation entirely different than the one you’re in, you know that it can be hard to reel your thoughts back into that ongoing reality.

Testing Openness and Its Possible Pros and Cons

With this framework in mind, Tucaković and Nedeljković compiled a set of questionnaires to test on their online sample of 540 adults (ages 18 to 65). Using both the FFM and HEXACO instruments (translated into Serbian), the authors constructed a statistical model that included measures of schizotypy (tendency to have distorted experiences), Need for Cognition (the desire to know new things), subjective well-being, disintegration, and mania.

To give you a sense of the openness components in each model, here are sample questions:

FFM

1. Imagination: love to daydream.
2. Artistic interests: believe in the importance of art.
3. Emotionality: experience my emotions intensely.
4. Adventurousness: like to visit new places.
5. Intellect: have a rich vocabulary.
6. Liberalism: believe that there is no absolute right or wrong.

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HEXACO:

1. Inquisitiveness: I enjoy looking at maps of different places.
2. Unconventionality: I think of myself as a somewhat eccentric person.
3. Aesthetic appreciation: I would be quite bored by a visit to an art gallery (reversed).
4. Creativity: people have told me that I have a good imagination.

In keeping with the predictions of the study authors, overall openness scores in both models proved to have little relationship to the other potentially related qualities. However, digging into the individual domains produced important distinctions between the adaptive and less adaptive aspects of the trait.

Within the FFM, there was a “pure openness” subdomain related to higher levels of mania, and a “pure intellect” subdomain associated with higher levels of subjective well-being, lower tendencies toward schizotypy, and a higher need for cognition. The “pure openness” subdomain included the FFM scales of imagination, artistic interests, and emotionality, and the “pure intellect” included adventurousness, intellect, and liberalism.

Among the pure intellect component of openness, it was adventurousness that proved to have higher correlations with subjective well-being, potentially due to “enjoyment in thinking, solving problems, and cognitive engagement." Similarly, from the standpoint of the HEXACO model, inquisitiveness showed positive relationships to well-being.

On the converse side, the Emotionality facet of FFM openness was positively related to mania, suggesting that individuals high in this quality are more likely to become excited, perhaps too much so. More generally, as noted by the authors, pure openness can be a risk factor for mood disorders but this can be minimized if a person is high in pure intellect. From the HEXACO standpoint, similarly, pure openness is related to the unconventionality facet, again suggesting that openness can become “too open” as a way to process experiences.

Taking Advantage of the Good of Openness, and Avoiding the Bad

As you can see from these findings, being adventurous has its benefits. Returning to the example of the sporting event you attended with your neighbor, it was definitely the right decision. Moving onto “pure intellect’s” other advantages, you might also promote your own development when you try new activities that can enhance your vocabulary or expand your appreciation of fine art

There are ample opportunities to expand your mind, whether in actual or virtual reality. Accepting invitations is certainly one route, but you can create your own “invitations” as well: Maybe a documentary shows up as a suggestion on your streaming service, and though you normally would never be interested in the topic, you decide to give it a try. There's one about a historical figure that catches your eye. To your pleasant surprise, you learned some fascinating new facts about both the person and the period that now lead you to pursue the topic in more depth. You’ve also got some new insights and ideas to talk about with your friends.

To sum up, the “right” kind of openness can open new worlds to you, both in in terms of your personality and in terms of your knowledge. The Serbian study shows that you can be too open for your own good, but not if you follow the pathway that can lead to expanding your mind.

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