This is a sample excerpt from a Big 5 Personality Trait – Relationship Report focusing on Openness which breaks down to Openness to Experience and Intellect. This example shows how to deal with 49th and 8th percentile scores, respectively.
Openness to Experience
Openness to experience is a big five personality trait associated with creativity, artistic interest, and intelligence. Openness to experience is a measure of a person’s interest in novelty, art, literature, abstract thinking, and philosophy as well as their sensitivity to aesthetic emotions and beauty. Research shows that openness is fairly assortative, which means that couples tend to align on this dimension of personality.
Personality psychologists have determined that there are two separable aspects of openness to experience: openness and intellect. Openness is associated with the aesthetic, creative, and visionary aspect of openness to experience. Intellect is associated with interest in ideas, curiosity, and abstract thought. We will first discuss your results for the trait of openness overall, and later its two aspects.
You are Typical or Average in Openness To Experience
Your score puts you at the 49th percentile for openness to experience. If you were one of 100 people in a room, you would be lower in openness to experience than 50 of them and higher in openness to experience than 49 of them.
You are typical in openness to experience. People who are typical in openness to experience are sometimes conservative and conventional, but also sometimes creative and exploratory, in relationships and otherwise. You are likely to be appropriately interested in change and in shaking things up in the relationship, but you also know the value of routine and familiarity. You may follow social norms when it comes to your role in the relationship, but you may also be open to doing things in unconventional ways. You may enjoy complex and abstract discussions with your partner from time to time, but will also sometimes prefer to discuss things at a more practical and concrete level. You are likely to be about as creative as the average person, and you will have a normal range of interests. You are not overwhelmingly curious, and are not strikingly interested in abstract thinking, philosophy, or the meaning of belief systems and ideologies. People with typical levels of openness tend to be adaptable, and can connect with people on either extreme of this trait.
OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE
49th percentile
Higher in openness to experience than 49 of 100 people
Your Partner is Low in Openness To Experience
Your partner’s score puts them at the 8th percentile for openness to experience. If your partner was one of 100 people in a room, your partner would be lower in openness to experience than 91 of them and higher in openness to experience than 8 of them.
Your partner is low in openness to experience. People who are low in openness to experience make conventional, traditional, and uncomplicated partners. They will want to stick to the status quo, and won’t usually want to stick out. People who are low in openness tend to follow social norms when it comes to their role in the relationship. They aren’t likely to want to try new things with their partner. They can’t see any real advantage in shaking things up, and are not interested in change for its own sake. They are not very interested in intellectual or abstract discussion with their partners, and they tend to be more concrete thinkers. They may have a fairly narrow range of interests, compared to the average person.
OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE
8th percentile
Lower in openness to experience than 91 of 100 people
Implications of Openness to Experience as a Couple
You are typical in openness to experience, and your partner is low in openness to experience.
This means the two of you have somewhat different strategies for dealing with the world, which can be beneficial for you as a couple. However, this may present a challenge within your relationship because you may have trouble understanding one another at times. You’ll have to be careful to avoid the pitfalls of your respective personality traits. Overall, however, your relationship is fairly balanced in this trait.
You and your partner are slightly different in openness to experience.
You may occasionally find it difficult to understand each other’s motivations, perceptions, and actions. You may occasionally have trouble finding shared interests and topics of discussion.
You can use your slight differences to your advantage, each helping one another to develop the virtues of the opposite trait. Personality psychologists believe that differences in both aspects of openness to experience are linked to clusters of genetic differences. Although it is possible to develop one’s personality over time, it’s also necessary to accept your innate differences to some degree. Expecting your partner to change often leads to frustration.
Openness To Experience: Behavioral Roles
You are slightly higher in openness to experience than your partner. You may sometimes see your partner as dull, predictable, conventional, and narrow. Your partner will sometimes see you as difficult to understand, eccentric, over-intellectual, impractical, unpredictable and “out there”.
You will be somewhat more interested in ideas, artistic endeavors, and cultural and political events than your partner. You will be a bit more likely to see yourself as creative, and more likely to be viewed that way by others as well. You are also somewhat more likely to be politically liberal than your partner is.
Your partner will be a little more interested in concrete topics of conversation, such as the actions of people in the immediate neighborhood and the local cares of the day. Compared to you, your partner will not be as interested in fantasizing, or day-dreaming, or art, or literature, or culture, or politics, or ideas.
Openness To Experience: Your Virtues and Faults as a Couple
When spending time together, you may find you have slightly different interests, although you should be able to find some shared interests. Your partner will be somewhat more interested in practical, concrete and conventional activities, while you will likely be a bit more interested in creative pursuits like art, music, and dance, as well as intellectual pursuits like reading, writing, programming, and mathematics. Your conversations may also be a bit difficult because of this: you will want to discuss things at a more abstract level than your partner, while your partner will prefer to discuss practicalities, at a more concrete level.
The two of you are likely to want different kinds of friends. You are likely to make friends with other people who are typical in openness to experience, while your partner is likely to make friends with other people who are lower in openness to experience. If you each have friends who are compatible with your particular trait profile it may make it easier for the two of you to negotiate your slight difference on this trait, as you will be able to find what you may need through sources other than your partner.
In your sex life together, your partner is likely to crave routine and conformity to social norms, while you may occasionally be interested in trying new things. You may be interested in sexual experimentation, but your partner is likely to be less comfortable with and less interested in this.
When it comes to religion, your partner is more likely to stick to the tradition he or she was raised in. He or she won’t be interested in different religions, and is likely to want to stay within his or her own community. You may be somewhat more interested than your partner in different philosophies and traditions, and may explore different spiritual experiences.
If and when you have children, your partner will tend to encourage traditional values, routine, and respect for authority in them. He or she may not want to try new things with them. You will be slightly more likely than you to expose your children to new ideas, art, and experiences, but may be less sensible and practical where that counts.