Defining Openness and Its Many Sides
Openness to experience is the factor whose interpretation varies most widely among the five factors of the Big Five model. In the NEO-PI-R it is made up of six subscales: fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas and values. People high in openness have abundant intellectual curiosity, are readily moved by art and beauty, question established values and conventions, and actively pursue new ideas and experiences. Those low in openness, by contrast, place weight on traditional values, prefer familiar methods, and excel at practical, concrete thinking. Openness shows a moderate positive correlation with intelligence, and with crystallised intelligence in particular, but it is not the same thing as intelligence: what it reflects is motivation towards and attitude concerning intellectual activity.
Creativity and Its Relation to Intellectual Curiosity
Openness is the strongest personality predictor of creativity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a leading figure in creativity research, identified the integration of contradictory characteristics as a feature common to creative individuals, and this is closely bound up with high openness. People high in openness excel at divergent thinking and have a strong capacity to find connections between concepts that appear unrelated. Intellectual curiosity is the core element of openness, and it manifests as a tendency to seek out new information actively and to take pleasure in tackling complex problems. Neuroscientifically, high openness is associated with patterns of dopaminergic activity, with research showing a stronger reward response to novel stimuli. This is a mechanism shared with the excitement of early romance, and it may be one reason why people high in openness are prone to feeling a powerful pull towards new relationships.
Openness and Shared Values
Openness plays an important role in the compatibility of couples, particularly from the standpoint of shared values. The values subscale of openness reflects flexibility in political, social and religious belief, and similarity along this dimension contributes to relationship satisfaction over the long term. Research indicates that couples similar in openness find it easier to share intellectual conversation and are more likely to converge in their preferences for leisure activity. Where both partners are high in openness, they can enjoy new experiences together, whether travel, appreciating art or contact with other cultures. Where both are low, they can share a stable daily routine. Problems arise most readily where there is a large gap in openness, since friction then develops in which the higher partner feels bored and the lower partner feels unsettled. According to Aron's self-expansion theory, sharing novel experiences with a partner contributes to revitalising the relationship, which means high openness can serve as a factor that guards against stagnation in a long-term relationship. A wide gap need not amount to friction in itself, though. If one partner brings new experiences home to talk about and the other enjoys being the listener, the gap turns into a supply of things to talk about. What decides the outcome is less the size of the difference than whether the two have settled how much of the new they take on together and where it is fine to go separately.