"Today I Learned": 50 Curious Things About The World People Didn’t Learn At School (New Posts)

Dr. Tsipursky explained that one of the most important ways that people's personalities differ from each other is a category called "openness to experience." According to him, it describes people who are more open to learning and trying out new things in life.

“Openness to experience is one of the ‘big five’ personality traits that research shows fundamentally differentiate people from each other,” Dr. Tsipursky said. “The five personality traits are: openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious); conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless); extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved); agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/rational); neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident).”

The book author claims that openness to experience, just like the other big five personality traits, is a range, not a binary. “Some people are highly curious, some people are moderately curious, some people are not at all curious. You can see this in toddlers - some like to run around and explore their environment, and others sit in the corner and play with blocks.”

When asked how we stay curious throughout life and what are the benefits of it, Dr. Tsipursky said that probably about half of our tendencies to be open to experience come from our genes, and half comes from our life experience and self-improvement efforts.

“That means we can learn to make better decisions when we shape our own personal openness to experience. In the modern world, it pays to be more open to experience than our intuitions suggest. Our intuitions are wired for the ancient savanna, when it was much more dangerous for our survival to be curious than it is right now,” he explained and added that “we should be more curious and stay more open to experience than our intuitions suggest.”

Many people feel a loss of motivation to explore new things as they age. “Research shows that teenagers are most comfortable with uncertainty, and become less comfortable as they become young adults,” Dr. Tsipursky said.

He continued: “And we become less and less comfortable with uncertainty as we age. We are evolved to be more exploration-oriented when young and when we are finding our place in the world, but our hormones change to cause us to be more oriented toward settling down and seeking comfort and certainty once we are older and find our place in life.”