Frankly, I don't see what either of those lists has to do with what I think of as "openness" (except maybe learning new things). When I think of being open to experiences I think of stuff like:

- when confronted with an unfamiliar food at a pot luck, do you skip it, try a bit, or heap it on?

- given the chance to travel to a new place do you just on it, consider your schedule first, or balk?

- do you (or have you) listened to many genres of music? If not, would you like the chance to?

- when waiting in line, do you strike up conversations with people next to you? (this might measure intro/extroversion, but it is also a sensation seeking behavior)

- If you found out you had to relocate to a new area, would you be excited by the change, even if you felt sad about leaving your current situation?

BUT... in the world of occupational therapy (esp pediatric) there is a whole set of stuff on this - sensory seeking/avoiding behavior. Frankly, the idea of "openness to experience" seems highly related (although not completely the same).

Things like being in the woods - what does that have to do with openness? I get what the author is saying about the obvious bias in those questions, but I think questions that really get at what they are trying to measure - rather than what they think correlates with it, would be more effective. I love the woods, but I am not very open to new experiences - and I am urban and have an advanced degree. I just prefer a lot of predictability.

Now, if they want openness to new thoughts (rather than experiences), that's another story. But MUCH harder to measure. A start might be one of those "do you agree with POLITICO X on this?" questions when it really is POLITICO Y's platform and see who is open to it even after they find out it belongs to Y.

Openness to Experience is one of the five big personality traits (remembered with OCEAN).

My friend Scott Barry Kaufman writes about it here:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/openness-to-experience-and-creative-achievement/

Openness to experience– the drive for cognitive exploration of inner and outer experience– is the personality trait most consistently associated with creativity.

...Just to name a few, openness to experience comprises intellectual curiosity, complex problem solving and reasoning, imagination, artistic and aesthetic interests, and emotional and fantasy richness.

Recent research suggests that the various forms of engagement that comprise openness to experience can be broken down into two main aspects:

Intellect: cognitive engagement with abstract and semantic information primarily through reasoning.

Openness: cognitive engagement with sensory and perceptual information.

But can we break down openness to experience even further, and are the distinctions useful for our understanding of creative achievement?

I think so.

Four Factors of Openness to Experience

He lays them out at the link.

The Big Five (personality traits):

Extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Openness to experience: (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience.

Openness reflects the degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity and a preference for novelty and variety a person has. It is also described as the extent to which a person is imaginative or independent, and depicts a personal preference for a variety of activities over a strict routine.

High openness can be perceived as unpredictability or lack of focus. Moreover, individuals with high openness are said to pursue self-actualization specifically by seeking out intense, euphoric experiences, such as skydiving, living abroad, gambling, et cetera.

Conversely, those with low openness seek to gain fulfillment through perseverance, and are characterized as pragmatic and data-driven—sometimes even perceived to be dogmatic and closed-minded. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret and contextualize the openness factor.

This is exactly why these are 'soft sciences'. It is a self reported survey for god's sake! What confidence do we have that people are reporting accurately? How about close to nil. So it is also smothered in left wing academic narcissism. What else is new.

Very few see themselves as they are. Most of us are above average at everything, or so we believe. Academics are not immune.

"Things like being in the woods - what does that have to do with openness? "

I think the point was, if the intent is to measure openness to experience with those types of questions, context is important. "Do you enjoy being in the woods" is no less (or more) valid than "Do you enjoy being in the art museum". If you go to art museums all the time, being in another one probably isn't a new experience. And yes, academic and "intellectual" types like to pat themselves on the back for supposedly being more willing to embrace foreign experiences and ideas -- even when all they are doing is trading the downtown loft in New York for the downtown loft in London or Munich or Austin, all of them having the trendy clothing stores, and the singer/songwriter bars with open mic night on Tuesdays, and the ready-made bevy of sophisticated friends and neighbors from academia and government.

It's not clear to me that openness to new ideas is, in of itself, a virtue. Openness to new ideas can include openness to bad ideas, like socialism. Further, I suspect that tools to measure openness to new experience tend to exhibit a bias that favors the young, for the simple reason that older people have experienced more things and have formed their preferences based on that. A survey question might ask about the subject's willingness to see a rock opera. Younger people who have never experienced one would probably answer yes. I went through all that back in the '70s, enough to know that I don't care for rock opera all that much (I might make an exception for Quadraphenia, which I've never seen a production of), so I'm not going to be excited about the opportunity to be subject to another one.

It's somewhat related to the socio-political bias in schools, where the 'honor roll' is pretty much restricted to those with good English and math skills, to the exclusion of shop, car repair, home ec, etc.

I wonder how such quizzes would score this particular museum?

http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/royal-arsenal-museum-gdk410541

I know that one because I've been there. I've also been to a couple of Kobenhaven's art museums. Push?

Like Duarte, I can traverse between the Cosmopolitan tribe and the Nativists? Doers? Or, to borrow a Dr. Whoism, Sevateem tribe. And I was born and grew up in a copper town.

I prefer the Sevateems: there is very little wordsmithing, and they generally give you their honest opinions about things. The problem I have with the Cosmos is that they'll use a $5 word when a $0.25 word works perfectly well.

Virtue signalling and all that.

Not only that, but the $5 word will be one carefully crafted to be malleable and retroactively re-definable.

"... is sophisticated in art, music, and literature."

I think Cousin Dave hits it.

Deciding one is sophisticated is definitely as CD says tend(s) to exhibit a bias that favors the young. And I would say young unmarried childless adults working in big "city" environments. Birds of a feather and all that.

Sad that the word "science" is associated w/this stuff.

I know a lot of handy people, such as my friend who built his own airplane and the neighbor who has restored a vintage mustang. These things require a strong drive to do new things, but with the hands, not just the eyes. You could ask if the person enjoys tinkering with a new type of motor or shooting a new gun or looks forward to the challenge of building an addition to the house. For ladies it might be if they enjoy trying new recipes (sorry, hard to think of many analogies to building your own airplane). For software it might be the challenge of a new language or new computing environment. This type of person might not read much but they will have "new" experiences and thus skills constantly.
Simple example, in college I wanted to hike cross country so I took an orienteering class then learned how to read USGS topo maps and memorize them (since they were expensive). Not at ALL the same as trying new foods or going to museums--those are passive activities, consuming sensations rather than being active.

Amy, I guess I don't get it.

Kinda sounds like "openness" is everything and the kitchen sink. I mean, what about the insanely creative folks with rich imaginations who are are homebodies? Somebody with insane artistic ability, but who doesn't like to try new things?

Perhaps risk tolerance is getting put in there?

Also, I think Cousin Dave had a good point. I don't want to try fish. Any fish. Old fish. New fish. None. Why? Enough experience getting sick after fish and I'm no longer open to it. I WAS, but I don't think my whole personality changed because I no longer wish to try fish.

Sketchy trait, sketchy measures, any statistical findings are likely spurious.

"For ladies it might be if they enjoy trying new recipes "

For this lady it would be the new gun..... :-)

Why would someone consider an art museum superior to the woods? Art appreciation is only mankind congratulating itself for being an artist.