Openness to Experience

Created: 2024-12-09 16:56:01 - Touched: 2024-12-09 17:56:36 - Status: Seed

Definition

Openness to Experience is one of the traits in the Five Factor Model of personality theory. As documented in the literature it has six facets:

  1. Active imagination (fantasy)
  2. Aesthetic sensitivity (presentation matters)
  3. Attentiveness to inner feelings (resistance to peer pressure?)
  4. Preference for variety (adventurousness)
  5. Intellectual curiosity (joy derived from the process of learning)
  6. Challenging authority (just because it's in a textbook doesn't mean it's right)

Intersectionality with Autism

There is conflicting information here, and my autistic experience is also conflicting. One of the Autistic diagnostic criteria is a preference for sameness, consistency, routine. When I have taken assessments for the Big Five, I consistently rank low on the Openness to Experience factor. Today my score for Openness to Experience was 7%. That to some extent matches my own experience; for example, once I find something I like at a restaurant, I tend to order the same thing every time because I know what to expect and know that I'll enjoy it. I have difficulty with interoception and alexithymia. I'm a home-body.

Conversely, I am a hobby collector. I have spent more time in university education than I did in grade school. I'm half way through this master's degree and I'm already thinking about the next one. My "learn things" youtube playlist backlog is very long. The second thing I planted in my digital garden after gender+autism was a bunch of information about learning. A constant stream of new things to learn about is one of my primary methods of coping with depression. I enjoy writing fiction, especially Fast Fiction. I tend to not re-read books. And I definitely struggle with respecting authority.

How can these two things both be true? It's possible that the attributes and experiences I have that align with Openness to Experience are connected with my ADHD, and those that do not are connected to my Autism. But I don't think that I, as a whole person, can be so easily categorized. So, I'm not sure yet.

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