DEFINITION:
The term “openness” refers to a personality trait consisting of the proclivity or desire to make oneself receptive and accessible to new people and situations.
ETYMOLOGY:
As a psychological term, “openness” was introduced into the literature by the American psychologists Paul T. Costa, Jr., and Robert R. McCrae, in work they did during the 1980s and early 1990s, especially in the set of questionnaires, with accompanying professional manual, entitled NEO PI-R Professional Manual: Revised NEO Personality Inventory and NEO Five-Factor Inventory, which they published in 1992. (Note that “NEO” stands for “neuroticism-extraversion-openness.”)
The English noun “openness” is attested from before the twelfth century. It is connected to the adjective “open,” which derives, via Middle English, from the Old English verb openian, meaning “to open.”
The Old English word derives from the putative Proto-West Germanic verb opanōn, meaning “to open,” and is akin to the Old High German adjective offan, meaning “open.”
DISCUSSION:
The personality trait of “openness” is fundamentally a propensity to seek knowledge and novel experience.
It is related to such other character traits or virtues as curiosity, receptivity, acceptance, frankness, friendliness, tolerance, and broad-mindedness.
“Openness” is one of the “Big Five personality traits.”