Openness
Emotionality
How aware you are of your own feelings, and how readily you express them.
Why it is measured
Access to your own inner states is separable from how strong those states are.
What a high or low score looks like
High scorers notice and name what they feel. Low scorers are less aware of their own emotional weather and express it less.
Why it matters
A very low score can drag the whole Openness domain down while the other five parts sit near average — one of the most common ways this domain misleads.
The items behind it
Four public-domain statements, answered on a five-point scale. Items marked − are reverse keyed: agreeing with them counts against the trait, which is what stops agreeing with everything from producing a high score.
- +Experience my emotions intensely
- +Feel others' emotions
- -Rarely notice my emotional reactions
- -Don't understand people who get emotional
Four items is not many. A facet measured this way carries real uncertainty, which is why every score on this site is reported as a range rather than a single number.