The Wiley Handbook of Genius

26 Openness to Scientific Innovation

Frank J. Sulloway

Introduction

Openness to novel experiences, including to new ways of thinking, is a fundamental aspect of human personality. Individual differences in this attribute are also found in lower animals, including other primates, cats, dogs, and hyenas (Bolig, Price, O'Neill, & Suomi, 1992; Gosling, 2001). Over the last several decades, “openness to experience” has become well established as one of the “Big Five” dimensions of personality, ranking alongside conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism within the Five-Factor Model of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992; John, 1990; John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae, 1994; McCrae & Costa, 1985). Together, these five dimensions capture the bulk of the variance in personality, and they have been documented in more than 50 different societies (McCrae & Allik, 2002; Schmidt, Allik, McCrae, & Benet-Martínez, 2007).

People who are open to experience are described as being intellectually curious, creative, appreciative of art, unconventional in their beliefs, and liberal in their social attitudes. People who score high on the other end of this personality dimension tend to prefer the familiar to the novel and are muted in their emotional responses, relatively focused in their interests, and conservative in outlook (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Not surprisingly, particularly innovative scientists score higher on this attribute than do their peers (Feist, 1998).¹

Given this ...