High openness quite puzzles me. You find it here, but also with the quite conformist humanities and arts people. It doesn't seem to tell much about of what sort the preference for novelty is, not if it is knowledge based or notion based, not if it actively pursued by exploratory behaviour or just a more passive receptivity/ infectability for novelty in the close environment. There seems to be a clear correlation with achievement. But being high in openness is also quite flattering and one might want to have that trait. I wonder what would happen if the big five questionnaires were inversed so that each question would be substituted with its "shadow question", asking for the dark aspect of the trait. "Dark" is maybe sufficiently dark if it is non-conventional: Asking the humanities and arts people if they would read a blog about race intelligence differences, the results would be different than asking for "trying something totally unfamiliar is exciting to me".
I share your concerns about how "Openness" is measured in studies. I often wonder how well it correlates with actual behavior, e.g. do people high in Openness really go to new restaurants more often those with low Openness, or do they just say they like it more? It seems a minor distinction, but a trait that predicts what people do is more relevant than a trait that merely predicts what they say. I rather suspect that much of the Openness score is really measuring what respondents aspire to be rather than what they are.
The problem of all self-report. They might even be right in relation to their close social environment. No matter how unopen groups are, there is always somebody who is a bit more open than the others, "the most open one in the village" (which might explain the correlation with achievement, especially in a fragmented society). But the self-reported degree of openness might not be too comparable across social environments. This is an overall (and known) problem of the big five. But it seems to me that with trait openness, regarding how fancy it sounds and how difficult it is to have a reasonable concept of novelty, there might be some other layers of difficulty adding. Going back to observing actual (especially non-lab) behaviour would be a very good thing to do.
I have a suspicion you're more likely to believe that not all humans have equal value. I believe Charles Murray on this. I would love if you could check if it's the case.
The problem with this question is that it doesn't include "to whom". I'm sure many people answered as if it was "all humans have equal value to me", but I suspect that many more answered "all humans have equal value in the world". The first is a moral stance and the second a fact assessment. The answers make much more sense if you presume most answered the second version than the first, though that may just be my optimism. Subsidiary note: This is why we need God, whether he is real or not. Question for next year: Should we act as if there is a God regardless of whether there is one?
High openness quite puzzles me. You find it here, but also with the quite conformist humanities and arts people. It doesn't seem to tell much about of what sort the preference for novelty is, not if it is knowledge based or notion based, not if it actively pursued by exploratory behaviour or just a more passive receptivity/ infectability for novelty in the close environment. There seems to be a clear correlation with achievement. But being high in openness is also quite flattering and one might want to have that trait. I wonder what would happen if the big five questionnaires were inversed so that each question would be substituted with its "shadow question", asking for the dark aspect of the trait. "Dark" is maybe sufficiently dark if it is non-conventional: Asking the humanities and arts people if they would read a blog about race intelligence differences, the results would be different than asking for "trying something totally unfamiliar is exciting to me".
I share your concerns about how "Openness" is measured in studies. I often wonder how well it correlates with actual behavior, e.g. do people high in Openness really go to new restaurants more often those with low Openness, or do they just say they like it more? It seems a minor distinction, but a trait that predicts what people do is more relevant than a trait that merely predicts what they say. I rather suspect that much of the Openness score is really measuring what respondents aspire to be rather than what they are.
The problem of all self-report. They might even be right in relation to their close social environment. No matter how unopen groups are, there is always somebody who is a bit more open than the others, "the most open one in the village" (which might explain the correlation with achievement, especially in a fragmented society). But the self-reported degree of openness might not be too comparable across social environments. This is an overall (and known) problem of the big five. But it seems to me that with trait openness, regarding how fancy it sounds and how difficult it is to have a reasonable concept of novelty, there might be some other layers of difficulty adding. Going back to observing actual (especially non-lab) behaviour would be a very good thing to do.
🧲💯🚀
Bro you gotta promote your survey more, this is poor marketing
I have a suspicion you're more likely to believe that not all humans have equal value. I believe Charles Murray on this. I would love if you could check if it's the case.
The problem with this question is that it doesn't include "to whom". I'm sure many people answered as if it was "all humans have equal value to me", but I suspect that many more answered "all humans have equal value in the world". The first is a moral stance and the second a fact assessment. The answers make much more sense if you presume most answered the second version than the first, though that may just be my optimism. Subsidiary note: This is why we need God, whether he is real or not. Question for next year: Should we act as if there is a God regardless of whether there is one?