http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience
Lots of interesting correlations!
Openness correlates with intelligence, correlation coefficients ranging from about r = .30 to r = .45.[11] Openness is moderately associated with crystallized intelligence, but only weakly with fluid intelligence.[11][12] A study examining the facets of openness found that the Ideas and Actions facets had modest positive correlations with fluid intelligence (r=.20 and r=.07 respectively).[11] These mental abilities may come more easily when people are dispositionally curious and open to learning. Several studies have found positive associations between openness to experience and general knowledge.[13][14][15][16] People high in openness may be more motivated to engage in intellectual pursuits that increase their knowledge.[16] Openness to experience, especially the Ideas facet, is related to need for cognition,[17] a motivational tendency to think about ideas, scrutinize information, and enjoy solving puzzles, and to typical intellectual engagement[18] (a similar construct to need for cognition).[19]”
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Psychologists in the early 1970s used the concept of openness to experience to describe people who are more likely to use marijuana. Openness was defined in these studies as high creativity, adventuresomeness, internal sensation novelty seeking, and low authoritarianism. Several correlational studies confirmed that young people who score high on this cluster of traits are more likely to use marijuana.[42][43] More recent research has replicated this finding using contemporary measures of openness.[44]
Cross-cultural studies have found that cultures high in Openness to Values have higher rates of use of the drug ecstasy, although a study at the individual level in the Netherlands found no differences in openness levels between users and non-users.[32] Ecstasy users actually tended to be higher in extraversion and lower in conscientiousness than non-users.
A 2011 study found Openness (and not other traits) was increased by psilocybin.[45] The study found that individual differences in levels of mystical experience while taking psilocybin were correlated with increases in Openness. Participants who met criteria for a ‘complete mystical experience’[note 1] experienced a significant mean increase in Openness, whereas those participants who did not meet the criteria experienced no mean change in Openness. Five of the six facets of Openness (all except Actions) showed this pattern of increase associated with having a mystical experience. Increases in Openness (including facets as well as total score) among those whose had a complete mystical experience were maintained more than a year after taking the drug. Participants who had a complete mystical experience changed more than 4 T-score points between baseline and follow up. By comparison, Openness has been found to normally decrease with ageing by 1 T-score point per decade.”
Very interesting. If shrooms can have lasting effects on O, perhaps we shud give shrooms to religious nutcases to open up their minds more?
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