Big Five guide
Openness: how to communicate with people high or low in it
People higher in openness are pulled toward ideas, novelty and the wider picture, so lead with the thinking behind your product and leave room to explore. People lower in openness prefer what is proven, so lead with concrete results, familiar examples and a next step that carries little risk.
Definition
What openness is
Openness, sometimes called openness to experience, describes how much someone is drawn to ideas, art, imagination and new ways of doing things. It is one of the five broad traits that decades of research on how people describe each other converged on (Goldberg, 1990).
It is a range, not a category. Most people sit near the middle, and neither end is better than the other. Higher openness brings curiosity and fresh thinking. Lower openness keeps work anchored to what has already been shown to work.
Intellect
Interest in ideas, abstract problems and how things work.
Openness
Interest in art, beauty and imagination.
Every Big Five trait divides into two aspects, and a person can sit high on one and in the middle on the other (DeYoung, Quilty and Peterson, 2007).
In one study, people higher in openness rated an advertisement more highly when its message was framed around creativity and intellectual stimulation (Hirsh, Kang and Bodenhausen, 2012). The effect was modest, and the authors note that framing does not rescue a weak message.
At work
What openness looks like day to day
Neither column is a better colleague or a better buyer. They need different things from you.
Higher openness
Curious and imaginative, drawn to new ideas
- Starts from the concept before the detail, and enjoys reframing the problem
- Brings up analogies, other industries and what might be possible
- Is comfortable with an unfinished plan if the idea is interesting
- Gets restless in long process discussions
Lower openness
Practical and grounded, prefers what is proven
- Wants to know what the thing does, what it costs and who else runs it
- Trusts methods with a track record over novel approaches
- Asks for examples from companies that look like theirs
- Reads big vision talk as a sign that the detail is missing
In writing
How openness shows up in language
Higher openness
- Longer words, and more articles and prepositions, which is a difference in style rather than topic (Yarkoni, 2010)
- Words about culture and ideas, such as poet, culture, narrative, art and literature (Yarkoni, 2010)
- On social media, words like music, art, writing and universe (Schwartz et al., 2013)
Lower openness
- More shorthand and abbreviation, such as 2day and ur (Schwartz et al., 2013)
- Concrete, practical subjects, with fewer references to ideas or art
Openness leaves the clearest trace in language of the five traits. In a study of 694 bloggers, 393 individual words were linked to it, against fewer than 30 for extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness (Yarkoni, 2010). Even so, these are averages across many writers, and one word tells you very little about one person.
How Tejesha estimates traits, and how confident it isFor sellers
Adapting outreach to openness
Same offer, different framing. Start here when you know roughly where someone sits.
Higher openness
- Open with the idea: what changed, why the old way stopped working, where this goes next
- Share the thinking, not only the result. A short piece on how the method works often lands better than a case study
- Give them something to react to, such as a draft, a prototype or a plan that is not finished
- Sending the same pitch in the same words every time
- Leading with a wall of logos and process steps
Lower openness
- Lead with the outcome in plain words, then the proof
- Use examples from companies and roles that look like theirs
- Spell out what changes in the first week, and what does not change at all
- Vision language and words like transform or reimagine
- Asking them to picture next year when they are solving this quarter
For recruiters
Writing to candidates
Higher openness
- Describe the problem to be solved, not only the title and the tools
- Say where the role can grow and what is still undecided
- Offer a conversation with someone already doing the work
Lower openness
- Be concrete about the role, the team, the tools and the process
- Answer the practical questions early: scope, hours, location, pay
- Show what the team has already shipped and how it works day to day
Questions
Questions about openness
- Is high openness better than low openness?
- No. Openness is a range and both ends carry advantages. People higher in openness tend to generate ideas and adapt quickly. People lower in openness keep work grounded in what has already been shown to work. What matters is the fit with the task, not the score.
- Can you tell how open someone is from their writing?
- Openness shows up in language more than any other Big Five trait. One study of 694 bloggers found 393 individual words linked to it, including words about art, culture and ideas, along with a preference for longer words (Yarkoni, 2010). Estimates from writing still describe tendencies rather than facts, which is why every Tejesha estimate carries a confidence level. How Tejesha estimates traits.
- Does openness change over time?
- On average it rises through adolescence and then declines in later life, according to a meta-analysis of 92 longitudinal samples (Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer, 2006). Change is gradual, so someone you met last year will read much the same now.
Sources
Last reviewed September 15, 2026.
- Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative "description of personality": The Big-Five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(6), 1216-1229.
- DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 880-896.
- Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(3), 363-373.
- Schwartz, H. A., Eichstaedt, J. C., Kern, M. L., Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S. M., Agrawal, M., Shah, A., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Seligman, M. E. P., & Ungar, L. H. (2013). Personality, gender, and age in the language of social media: The open-vocabulary approach. PLOS ONE, 8(9), e73791.
- Hirsh, J. B., Kang, S. K., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2012). Personalized persuasion: Tailoring persuasive appeals to recipients' personality traits. Psychological Science, 23(6), 578-581.
- Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1-25.
The other four traits
See these traits in the people you write to
Tejesha estimates the same five traits from public professional writing, with a confidence level for every trait.