Openness to Experience and Health: A Review of the Literature

The Five Factor Model, one of the most commonly used models for assessing personality, consists of five main universal traits: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience (McCrae & John, 1992). Recently, its application to fields investigating the role of personality on physical and mental health has been extensive, with most traits producing consistent results across studies. The fifth of the model’s main traits, however, openness to experience, has produced inconsistent results. In this review, we attempt to understand why these findings have been mixed by analyzing various facets of this trait in depth. We evaluate the six facets of openness to experience: actions, ideas, values, aesthetics, fantasy, and feelings individually to better understand the implications of openness to experience on physical and mental health.