Openness Research: A Narrative Review
Tiffany Field
Openness, as one of the four positive Big Five personality traits, is characterized by being open to new experiences, curious, adventuresome and creative. Some papers have appeared in this recent literature on positive effects of openness on emotions including emotional intelligence, social anxiety, empathy and affect. Openness has also contributed to several cognitive effects including episodic memory, cognitive functioning, knowledge-sharing, creativity, academic success, and liberalism. Several behaviors have also been influenced by openness including greater tolerance, having different race friends, less aggression, less caution of robots, greater humor production, and greater non-suicidal injury. Potential underlying biological mechanisms have been addressed for openness including brain status variables, brain network features, the default mode network, the memory network, the prefrontal cortex, the locus coeruleus, functional connectivity and gray matter volume.
Openness or openness to experience, as one of the four positive Big Five personality traits, is characterized by being open to new experiences, curious, adventuresome and creative. Individuals who are high on openness show receptiveness to new ideas and imagination, often resulting in greater achievement and better health. These qualities and effects highlight the importance of research and reviews of research on openness.
This narrative review includes current research not only on positive effects of openness on emotions, cognition and behaviors but also on potential underlying biological mechanisms for openness. The papers were found on PubMed and PsycINFO by entering the term openness and the years 2022-2026. Exclusion criteria were protocols, case studies and non-English language papers.
The 31 papers in this current literature review can be categorized as positive effects of openness on emotions (4 papers), cognition (7 papers), and behaviors (6 papers), as well as potential underlying biological mechanisms (12 papers) and interventions (2 papers). These sections are followed by a discussion on methodological limitations of this current literature.
