High Big Five openness? How to read which of six facets lifted your score

Find the facet behind a high Big Five openness score. Averages and “high” cutoffs for Imagination, Artistic Interest, Emotionality, Adventurousness, Intellect and Liberalism, plus strengths and tiring sides.

SCHROE Editors

Saturday morning, break time at a neighborhood woodworking studio. Yerin set down the cutting board she had been sanding and handed her phone to Mujin. “My Big Five openness came out at 70. But I can’t tell what’s pushing it up. Nobody has ever called me imaginative.” Mujin scrolled down and pointed at one line. “Look. It says Adventurousness and Liberalism are especially high. Nothing about imagination.”

Yerin and Mujin are fictional, and Yerin’s scores are an illustration. How the scores are calculated, the items, and the comparison data all come straight from the item file, scoring code and norm file used by the SCHROE Big Five (OCEAN) test at schroe.kr.

Big Five openness looks like one number, but six facets sit inside it. Two people can both score 70 while different facets carry them there. This article does not walk through all five traits. It stays inside openness and covers how to read which facet lifted your score, plus where high openness helps and where it wears you out. Why a score and your position differ, and how to compare the five traits, is already covered in how to read your Big Five result.

24 openness items, four per facet

The SCHROE items come from the public IPIP item pool, specifically the 120-item IPIP-NEO-120. Openness gets 24 items, split into exactly four per facet. Here are the on-screen names and real item examples.

Imagination: “I have a vivid imagination.” “I love to daydream.”
Artistic Interest: “I see beauty in things that others might not notice.” “I do not like poetry.” (reverse-scored)
Emotionality: “I experience my emotions intensely.” “I feel others' emotions.”
Adventurousness: “I prefer variety to routine.” “I dislike changes.” (reverse-scored)
Intellect: “I love to read challenging material.” “I am not interested in theoretical discussions.” (reverse-scored)
Liberalism: “I believe that there is no absolute right and wrong.” “I tend to vote for conservative political candidates.” (reverse-scored)

Twelve of the 24 items are reverse-scored. All four Imagination items count straight, but three of four Adventurousness items and three of four Intellect items are worded the other way. Answering “strongly disagree” to “I dislike changes” raises your openness.

Facet and trait scores are built the same way: the 1–5 answers are averaged and mapped to 0–100, then rounded (1 is 0, 3 is 50, 5 is 100). The openness score is the average of all 24 items. In the full test every facet has four items, so the trait score is almost exactly the average of the six facet scores. One unusually high facet pulls the trait up; one low facet pulls it down.

The standard test does not show facet scores

Check one thing first. Facet scores and the “Details that stand out in your answers” card appear only after the full 120-item test. The 50-item standard test uses 10 openness items. Counting the items it actually picks, Imagination and Liberalism get one item each and the other four facets get two. One or two items cannot tell you whether a facet is high, so the site shows only the trait score in the standard test. The openness info page says it too: “Your score on each facet is available in the full 120-question test.”

If a standard test gave you high openness, use this article as a map for guessing which facet it might be, and confirm with the full test.

Same 75, different position per facet

The full-test result shows each facet score next to the public-sample average. The comparison set is Johnson’s public IPIP-NEO-120 sample of 410,376 respondents. Inside openness, the six facet averages differ a lot.

| Facet | Public-sample average | Position at a facet score of 75 | First score marked “high” | |---|---|---|---| | Imagination | 68.78 | top 42% | 81 | | Artistic Interest | 65.7 | top 39% | 81 | | Emotionality | 69.64 | top 42% | 81 | | Adventurousness | 53 | top 15% | 63 | | Intellect | 65.99 | top 38% | 81 | | Liberalism | 46.94 | top 10% | 56 |

With four items, full-test facet scores move in steps of 6.25 (56, 63, 69, 75, 81…). The last column is the first of those steps whose percentile passes 65, the line for “high”.

This is the heart of reading openness. Imagination, Artistic Interest, Emotionality and Intellect are facets most respondents already rate high, so a 75 sits near the middle. Adventurousness and Liberalism average around 50, so the same 75 lands in the top 15% and top 10%.

How the “stand out” card picks facets

The card ranks facets by position among public respondents, not by raw score. Three rules:

A percentile above 65 is high; below 35 is low.
Only facets at least 12 points from 50 qualify.
Out of all 30 facets across the five traits, only the three farthest from the middle are shown.

So if Imagination rarely appears on a high-openness card, nothing is wrong. Imagination needs 81 to count as high, while Adventurousness is high at 63 and Liberalism at 56. A facet missing from the card is not low, either; facets from other traits may simply be farther out and take the three slots.

Splitting Yerin’s 70 into facets

Back at the studio, suppose Yerin’s full-test facets were Imagination 75, Artistic Interest 63, Emotionality 69, Adventurousness 81, Intellect 63 and Liberalism 69. Averaging her 24 answers gives a trait score of 70.

By raw score, Imagination is her second-highest. By position, Imagination 75 is top 42%, right around average. Adventurousness 81 is top 9% and Liberalism 69 is top 16%. What pushed Yerin above average was not imagination but reaching first for things she has never tried and questioning fixed answers. That one line Mujin pointed at is exactly this calculation.

Yerin nodded. “Right. I signed up here last month just because I’d never done it. And this board is on its third design.” Mujin laughed. “Then this one gets finished.”

Strengths differ by facet

The site describes the high-openness strength as: “You can bring fresh angles to stuck situations and help others see new options.” Where that strength comes from depends on the facet. The notes below are a reading based on the item content.

Imagination or Artistic Interest: you picture the scene first and notice details others walk past. Strong for first sketches and setting a mood.
Emotionality: you register your own reactions and other people’s moods quickly, and you reshape a message so it lands.
Adventurousness: you try the new tool, place or order first. Good for first attempts where nobody knows until someone tries.
Intellect: hard reading and theory talk don’t bore you. You are good at redefining a problem one level up.
Liberalism: you don’t accept “that’s how it’s done” at face value. You ask why a rule exists and leave room for other standards.

Where it wears you out, by facet

The same report adds a caution: “When ideas multiply, choosing one to finish becomes important.” The misreading high-openness people often hear is listed as “scattered”.

That tiredness takes different shapes. High Adventurousness piles up started projects. High Intellect can add one more question just when a decision is due. High Liberalism can earn a sigh of “change it again?” from people who like the familiar way. High Emotionality means a film or a conversation lingers and quietly spends more of the day’s energy than expected.

The fix is simple. Once you know which facet drives things, brake only that facet’s next step. With high Adventurousness like Yerin, finish one current thing before starting a new one. With high Intellect, write the question down and still decide today. You don’t need less openness; you need an order for it.

One last thing to keep in mind

Three of the four Liberalism items ask about political candidates and crime policy. They come straight from the original pool, so this facet reflects social attitudes more than taste. The public sample also leans toward English-speaking online respondents, so read your position on this facet loosely.

In order: check that you took the full test, compare the six facet scores against the public-sample average marker under “Detailed scores”, and see whether an openness facet shows up under “Details that stand out”. That facet is the engine behind your openness.

See your six openness facets in the SCHROE Big Five (OCEAN) test

Try it yourself

See your six openness facets in the Big Five test