Using Psychology to Develop Character Personalities (Part 4 of 5)
Openness
If you are a regular patron of my blog, chances are you are high in openness, which is the next of our big five personality traits we are talking about today. This is part four of a five-part series on the Big Five Personality Traits. As a refresher, the Big 5 are a scientifically tried and true way of mapping one’s personality. When I write, I use each of these five personality traits to craft a character that is real to life as possible. Once I have their personalities down, I can map out with ease how each of my characters would react to various situations.
As a refresher, I want to remind you that each of the five personality traits are part of a spectrum. A person can lie anywhere on the spectrum. The Big 5 personalities are agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness. A person who is high in agreeableness is more likely to be kind, polite, and compassionate. Someone low in agreeableness would be generally considered harsh, cold, and aggressive. For more information on the Big 5 personalities as a whole, be sure to check out my first post of the series, conscientiousness.
What does a person with trait openness look like? Well, an open person is generally interested in learning and getting involved in new ideas. They tend to be highly creative and are open to trying new things. Open people are often more willing to be flexible and react well to change. Openness is also linked to IQ. A person high in openness is more able to abstract information and make connections than a person who is less open.
So what is a closed minded person like? Generally, they are the opposite. They are not as open to change, are less interested in learning new ideas, and like to keep things the same. They are less creative and like routines.
Whenever I talk about these two categories, I immediately think of two different types of people that I know. The 9 to 5 business man or factory worker who likes their life to be exactly a certain way, and a person like Elon Musk who dabbles into just about everything and is very open to a wide plethora of ideas.
Of all the Big 5 personalities, this is probably the least modifiable in your characters. Now, that’s not to say that factory person above can’t be an open person stuck in a rut who finally breaks free. Let’s take the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as an example. If you haven’t seen this movie and want to, warning as I talk about spoilers.
In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Ben Stiller plays a guy with a dull job and is constantly daydreaming adventures for his life. Then when his job is on the line, he goes on his own adventure and gets to live the life of his dreams. As you can see, the story arc of this character has less to do with his openness, but is instead to do with his conscientiousness. He had spent his life being responsible and safe doing a job that was boring while his high level of openness was calling him to freedom.
Consider this story in contrast to Flowers for Algernon. In this story, they take a gentleman with a low IQ who is low in openness and increase his IQ. His interest in topics and various pursuits increases rapidly. Things he would never have hoped to dream of learning come to him, enriching his life. This is a change in trait openness. It did not come about through normal means of a story arc, but rather through the intervention of scientists. It is relatively easy to lower a person’s trait openness through disease or injury, but it is not easy to raise it.
And of course there comes up the storyline of a person from a certain culture slowly becoming more open to another way of thinking and culture, but once again, I would link this back to conscientiousness and the pursuit of orderliness. For an example, a person who believes races should marry within their own races has an issue with orderliness. Keep in mind that there are pros and cons to every personality trait.
So what is the problem with too much openness? Well consider a person who is extremely creative—they might be so creative they have trouble categorizing their ideas. The idea could be a revolutionary—thing—that would ease the lives of thousands of people, but they first have to be able to explain what said thing is. Many novelists run into this problem. They write a unique work of fiction that is a little bit sci-fi, romance, part-heroes journey, and a murder mystery. Then they try to sell it to a publisher, but the publisher doesn’t know where to set it on the bookshelf. It’s too many things. Many creatives live in anonymity with loads of talent but no financial gains.
There is also an illness associated with people high in trait openness—Bipolar Disorder. This is because during a manic state, a person can become very fluid with their creativity and create all sorts of things. Ever heard of a tortured artist? This is linked with trait openness.
Being creative and having a high IQ does track well for success as compared to those who are low in openness, but all things come at a price. So, how open are your characters? Are they creative? Or do they prefer things to be the same? Do they think outside the box? You can create a large range of colorful characters with this one trait.
My character, Jared, in my story SURVIVING MIDAS is a child genius and very high in openness. As a slave, he stands out among his peers as being clever. This also makes him dangerous as he is more likely than the others to escape. Most of the conflict surrounding the story rides on this one personality trait. In a normal society, Jared would thrive, but here it’s likely to bring about his doom.
So, now we have covered 3 personality traits and already, you have a pretty good view of my character Jared. He’s very intelligent, high in openness, conscientious, but also a disagreeable survivor. Can you visualize such a character? You could take him out of his current setting and put him in several other roles: surgeon, CEO, entrepreneur, you name it, so it’s only one part of the story, but it is a key component. His backstory irons out the details of his personality, but these are great building blocks for you as a writer to start with.
