Advantages and Disadvantages of Openness to Experience

Our willingness to think about new ideas and experience new things is one of the "Big Five" personality traits which psychologists have managed to divide our personalities into. Openness to experience describes a personality that is imaginative, original, unconventional and artistic.

A person who is high in openness to experience is creative, flexible, intellectually curious and adventurous. He enjoys having his mind and sense stimulated, such as by viewing art, listening to music, sampling exotic cuisine and reading literature and poetry. An open person likes to have variety in his day-to-day life and craves novelty. Those high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests. High scorers on openness are eager to try new activities, travel to foreign lands, and experience different things. They find familiarity and routine boring, and will take a new route home just because it is different.

While on the other hand, 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 the plain, straightforward and obvious over the complex, ambiguous and subtle. Their beliefs typically match the status quo and his choices in occupation, apparel and other purchases tend to go along with the mainstream standards. People that are closed on experience are down-to-earth and practical and sometimes obstructive of change.

The NEO PI-R personality test, a psychological personality inventory, measures six facets, or elements of openness to experience:

1. Fantasy - the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life.

To imaginative individuals, the real world is often too plain and ordinary. High scorers on this scale use fantasy as a way of creating a richer, more interesting world. Low scorers on this scale are more oriented to facts than fantasy.