“While no single framework of the psyche can truly capture the whole, which is without a doubt greater than the sum of its parts, the Big Five model – also known as the Five Factor Model – is certainly a useful tool that can effectively shed light on critical dimensions of personality. In this study, we will be focusing on the first of the five aforementioned: openness, or rather openness to experience. Individuals who score high on openness tend to have a more broad approach to life, being far more receptive to novel ideas, experiences, and approaches than those who score otherwise. Those who score high on openness tend to not just crave but perhaps need more broad mental and experiential horizons, while their counterparts, those who score low on the metric, tend to prefer what is tried and true, likely finding comfort and satisfaction in adhering to existing models.

“Creativity, the second of our variables, is not a new term to anyone. However, science does not like easy answers! Rather, it prefers to hold a magnifying glass to pre-existing notions, re-examining, refining, and perhaps completely revamping them with its critical eye if necessary. So, with that being said, the question then is: what truly is creativity? Creativity is easy to recognize when it happens – it’s easy to pinpoint a creative person when we see one – but it most certainly is more difficult to define. I would argue that creativity is a measure of novelty and meaning as they intermix. Creativity is fueled by originality and innovation – the more creative something is, to use it as a descriptor or an adjective, the more unlike its predecessors it is. Creativity can be a means of taking existing parts and rearranging them into something completely new. However, pure novelty is not enough – something can technically be novel even if it is purely random and arbitrary. When novelty combines with meaning – meaning defined as something that can touch the emotions and make the viewer feel something – we have a truly creative work. Creative individuals, then, are those who can engage in the act of creation by bringing novel, meaningful ideas and works into being, with the measure of their creativity perhaps being equivalent to the novelty, meaning, and beauty of what they manifest.”