Testing the Information-Seeking Theory of Openness/Intellect

Why are open people open? A recent theory suggests that openness/intellect reflects sensitivity to the reward value of information, but so far, this has undergone few direct tests. To assess preferences for information, we constructed a novel task, adapted from information-seeking paradigms within decision science, in which participants could choose to see information related to a guessing game they had just completed. Across two studies (one exploratory, n = 151; one confirmatory, n = 301), openness/intellect did not predict information seeking. Our results thus do not support a straightforward version of the theory, whereby open individuals display a general-purpose sensitivity to any sort of new information. However, trait curiosity (arguably a facet of openness/intellect) predicted information seeking in both studies, and uncertainty intolerance (inversely related to openness/intellect) predicted information seeking in Study 2. Thus, it is possible that the domain-level null association masks two divergent information-seeking pathways: one approach motivated (curiosity) and one avoidance motivated (uncertainty intolerance). It remains to be seen whether these conflicting motivations can be isolated and if doing so reveals any association between information-seeking and the broader openness/intellect domain. (c) 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology