Openness is the most controversial of the five. McCrae and Costa define it as "the active appreciation of experience for its own sake; tolerance and exploration of the unfamiliar". Some researchers prefer to call it Intellect/Imagination because it splits into two somewhat distinct clusters.
The six facets (NEO PI-R):
- O1 Fantasy — rich imaginative life.
- O2 Aesthetics — sensitivity to art and beauty.
- O3 Feelings — receptivity to one’s own emotions.
- O4 Actions — willingness to try new things.
- O5 Ideas — intellectual curiosity.
- O6 Values — openness to questioning norms.
The knot: two components
DeYoung et al. (2007) empirically showed that O contains two distinct aspects:
- Intellectual openness (mainly O5, O6) — correlates with general intelligence (~.30).
- Aesthetic/imaginative openness (O1, O2, O3) — correlates with creativity and unusual experiences.
A person can be high in O5 (loves debating philosophy) and low in O1 (doesn’t fantasize). Another can be high in O2 (lives art) and low in O5 (no interest in abstract ideas). The aggregate "O index" hides that — which is why the facet breakdown matters.
What is known:
- O is the dimension most correlated with measured creativity (Feist, 1998).
- High O predicts politically more liberal positions in the Anglo sense; low O, more conservative. Correlation is modest (~.20) but stable.
- High O is associated with greater risk of mild psychotic-like experiences in vulnerable people (DeYoung et al., 2012). In most it is just a more permeable mind.
- It is the dimension most affected by formal education and exposure to other cultures.
In your Afini profile, O appears with its 6 facets, and the O5 vs O1/O2 contrast tells you whether your openness is more "intellectual" or more "imaginative".