Openness to Experience

openness, personality

Are you ready to learn more about openness?

by Sydney Slavin

Our personalities make us who we are.  It influences the decisions we make,activities we pursue, and the way in which we perceive and deal with events in our lives.  While our behavior is malleable, our personalities are hardwired. Research shows that once our personalities are developed, there is little change.  Some aspects of our personalities may become more dominant based on environmental influence.Openness to experience which is described as novelty-seeking, intellectual curiosity, a vivid imagination, awareness of inner emotional states, and deep appreciation for the artsis one of the Big Five personality traits.  Individuals with high openness to experience seek out activities that bring meaning to their lives and allow them to think about things in a different way.

Openness to experience has been found to be much more complex than its counterparts: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.  The complexity originates from the trait’s ability to describe such a wide selection of people as openness to experience describes those who appreciate the arts, those who enjoy traveling and trying new foods, and those who love to fantasize.  While people may have similar levels of the broad trait, openness to experience, they may differ in the facets which encompass the trait.

As with all things, finding balance is key.  Different research suggests that high levels of openness to experience is beneficial as well as contributes to negative results.  Being at either end of the openness to experience spectrum may not be beneficial based on the specific behaviors exhibited.

It is believed that once we reach adulthood our personalities have developed with little change over our lifespan, however, recent research indicates that cognitive training increases openness to experience in older adults.  Through completing a series of pattern-recognition, problem-solving tasks, and puzzles, which increased in difficulty as skills improved, the key was to find the balance between challenge and skill as this increases the desire to complete the task while continuously improving.  According to researchers, growing confidence in [the participants’] reasoning abilities enabled greater enjoyment of intellectually challenging and creative endeavors.

We offer a few personality tests:

Big Five

Keirsey Temperament Sorter

Instead of scrolling through your Facebook news feed, opt for a brain game, crossword puzzle, or Sudoku, to advance your cognitive function and increase your openness to experience!

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2015 at 7:32 pm. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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