Openness To Experience

Within the depth-psychology corpus assembled in Seba, Openness to Experience functions simultaneously as a psychometric construct, an experiential orientation, and a latent explanatory variable connecting aesthetic, contemplative, and health-related phenomena. Its most sustained treatment appears in the empirical literature on aesthetic engagement, where researchers such as Williams, Johnson, and their colleagues position it as the dominant Big Five predictor of awe proneness, aesthetic chill, and stress-related growth orientation. Here a key internal tension emerges: the broad domain-level trait exerts influence on stress physiology and coping, yet the Aesthetics facet consistently outperforms the overarching factor in predicting specific experiential outcomes, suggesting that the construct is not monolithic. McCrae’s claim that aesthetic chill functions as a ‘universal marker’ of the trait operates as a recurring citation anchor, linking psychophysiology to personality structure. A second, less quantitative tradition — represented by Welwood and Trungpa — treats openness not as a measured trait but as a fundamental quality of mind, analogous to the Buddhist notion of non-grasping presence. The tension between these registers — nomothetic measurement versus contemplative phenomenology — gives the entry its distinctive depth-psychological valence, inviting readers to consider whether the statistical construct and the meditative orientation name the same underlying human capacity.

In the library 19 passages

aesthetic chill (i. e., in the context of aesthetic stimuli and accompanied by the hypothesized concomitant emotional state of awe) appears to be unique in demonstrating reliable associations with individual differences in openness to experience

Aesthetic chill is argued to be the single most reliable physiological marker of Openness to Experience, uniquely tied to awe rather than to other chill-inducing emotional states.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022thesis

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Openness predicted lower levels of behavioral disengagement and denial, and higher levels of acceptance, planning, problem-solving confidence, and approach-orientation

Openness to Experience predicts an adaptive stress-coping profile characterized by acceptance and approach-orientation rather than disengagement or denial.

Johnson, Kimberley T., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Stress-Related Growth Orientation, 2021thesis

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dispositional awe proneness correlated more highly with openness than with the other four personality factors and that openness correlated more highly with dispositional awe proneness than with seven other positive emotion dispo

Of all Big Five factors, Openness shows the most specific and robust correlation with dispositional awe, establishing it as the personality foundation of awe-proneness.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022thesis

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it is well-established that aesthetic chill occurs more frequently in individuals who report high levels of Openness. That is, Openness appears to be related to successful cognitive accommodation leading to positive-valenced aesthetic emotions and aesthetic chill.

Openness facilitates flexible cognitive accommodation, which explains why high-open individuals more frequently experience positive aesthetic chill rather than distress when confronted with disorienting stimuli.

Johnson, Kimberley T., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Stress-Related Growth Orientation, 2021thesis

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individual differences in aesthetic engagement — the propensity to be moved by art, nature, and beauty and a facet of the personality factor Openness to Experience — are associated with adaptive stress regulation

Aesthetic engagement, conceptualized as a facet of Openness to Experience, is empirically linked to adaptive stress regulation, grounding the broader trait in functional health outcomes.

Johnson, Kimberley T., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Stress-Related Growth Orientation, 2021thesis

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Bivariate correlations of dispositional awe proneness with NEO factors revealed significant positive associations with Openness and Extraversion; however, the association with Openness was significantly greater than that for Extraversion

Empirical data confirm that among personality factors, Openness is the superior and more specific predictor of dispositional awe proneness compared to Extraversion.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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the findings of the current study clearly suggest that openness/aesthetic engagement associations with awe are more specific and wide-ranging

Openness and its aesthetic engagement facet demonstrate broader and more consistent associations with awe than agreeableness, positioning the trait as the central personality correlate of awe experience.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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differences in susceptibility to (aesthetically) rewarding experiences (as captured, for instance, by the Big Five trait openness to experience, cf. McCrae, 2007) should be linked to the overall intensity and frequency of experiencing aesthetic emotions

Openness to Experience is posited as the key personality variable regulating susceptibility to and frequency of aesthetic emotional experiences across multiple domains.

Menninghaus, Winfried, What Are Aesthetic Emotions?, 2015supporting

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the Aesthetics facet of Openness was found to predict less blood pressure reactivity and was associated with markers of positive engagement (increase in RSA and positive affect; Williams et al., 2009)

The Aesthetics facet of Openness predicts reduced cardiovascular stress reactivity, suggesting a direct psychophysiological pathway from the trait to adaptive biological stress responses.

Johnson, Kimberley T., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Stress-Related Growth Orientation, 2021supporting

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aesthetic engagement is the aspect of openness most strongly related to the experience of awe. The specificity of these associations with awe, relative to other emotional states across valence (i. e., vs. negative affect), has also not been investigated.

Aesthetic engagement is hypothesized as the facet of Openness most selectively linked to awe, distinguishing it from broader positive or negative emotional reactivity.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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The association between reported proneness to aesthetic chill and the Openness to Aesthetics facet was confirmed in both studies.

Across two independent samples, proneness to aesthetic chill consistently converges with the Openness to Aesthetics facet, replicating a foundational link between the trait and somatic aesthetic response.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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McCrae, R. R. (2007). Aesthetic chills as a universal marker of openness to experience.

This bibliographic entry anchors the influential claim that aesthetic chills serve as a cross-cultural, universal psychophysiological indicator of the Openness to Experience personality dimension.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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Bivariate correlations were examined between goal-directed strivings and Openness to Experience (domain and six lower-order facets). As predicted, the SI scale was significantly correlated with the Aesthetics facet

Among all facets of Openness to Experience, the Aesthetics facet most specifically predicts growth-oriented self-improvement strivings in naturalistic stressor contexts.

Johnson, Kimberley T., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Stress-Related Growth Orientation, 2021supporting

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Both Openness and Agreeableness were each associated with baseline composite PA in addition to awe ratings for the aesthetic clip… Both personality factors continued to predict awe even when controlling for baseline PA and baseline awe

Openness independently predicts experimentally induced awe beyond baseline positive affect, confirming that its association with awe is not reducible to general positive emotionality.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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the NEO-FFI questionnaire allows to obtain information on five basic personality dimensions such as: Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness

Openness is operationalized here as one of five universal, biologically determined, culturally stable personality dimensions used to examine religious experience, situating the trait within cross-cultural personality theory.

Glaz, Stanislaw, Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience: The Construction of the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale (IRES), 2020supporting

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you are not afraid of hurting yourself or anyone else because you are completely open. You do not feel uninspired with situations… You do not regard the situation outside as separate from you because you are so involved with the dance and play of life.

Trungpa reframes openness as a contemplative and ethical quality of complete non-defensive presence, rendering it a disposition that dissolves the subject-object divide rather than a measurable personality trait.

Trungpa, Chögyam, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, 1973supporting

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impure experience — marked by ignorance, dualism, aggression, grasping — is transmuted into pure experience, illumined by awareness, openness, nongrasping, and spontaneous appreciation

Welwood, drawing on Vajrayana Buddhism, positions openness alongside nongrasping and awareness as the hallmarks of transmuted, purified experience, locating the term within a transformative contemplative framework.

Welwood, John, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000aside

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if we are unable to let our experience be, or to open to it just as it is, then our psychological work may reinforce the habitual tendency of the conditioned personality to turn away from nowness

Welwood argues that the therapeutic failure to open to present experience reinforces conditioned personality defensiveness, treating openness as a curative attitudinal stance rather than a stable trait.

Welwood, John, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000aside

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proneness to aesthetic chill (a putative ‘universal marker’ of Openness; McCrae, 2007), separate from other aspects of aesthetic engagement and Openness, more broadly

The study isolates aesthetic chill proneness as a potentially independent pathway through which Openness exerts its influence on stress-related growth orientation, beyond the broad trait.

Johnson, Kimberley T., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Stress-Related Growth Orientation, 2021aside

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