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3.3.5 Openness to Experience and Overexcitability: Same, Similar, or Different?

The Five Factor Model (FFM) is prominent in personality research. The model was derived from a lexical analysis of descriptors of personality, yielding five personality continua: Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Each of these factors is further divided into dimensions or facets (McCrae & Costa, 1997). Hundreds of research studies use the FFM to understand human behavior, including the relationship between personality and intelligence.

The FFM factor Openness to Experience is consistently, positively correlated with intelligence. Heritability studies suggest that Openness is ‘substantially’ heritable (DeYoung & Gray, 2009). Openness is correlated to other attributes cited in gifted literature including creativity (Silvia et al., 2009) and moral reasoning (Cawley, Martin, and Johnson, 2000).

Descriptions of the FFM factors, particularly Openness to Experience, bear similarity to descriptions of Dabrowski’s overexitabilities as presented in Dabrowski & Piechowski (1977). According to Dabrowski’s theory, these overexcitabilities are a necessary precursor to advanced development. Research has documented the presence of overexcitabilities among the gifted. Intellectual and Imaginational overexcitability are most consistently related to intelligence, although different combinations are identified in different studies.

Recently a group of researchers suggested that the concept of Overexcitability can be retired because Openness and Overexcitability are the same. This session will investigate that claim, considering both research and underlying constructs associated with each. Research from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator will provide a third point of reference, and to provide an alternate hypothesis of the relationship between and among the three constructs. From there, the discussion will turn to the relative merits and drawbacks to each approach to personality description, and what they have to contribute to the understanding of giftedness. New data gathered from populations of highly gifted students will reveal the benefit of working with differing paradigms in tandem.

Throughout, the session will present the opportunities presented by the current debate to clarify and refine research into overexcitabilities. This includes questions regarding the measurement of overexcitabilities, especially whether the OEQ II actually measures “over” excitability, and whether having one area of overexcitability is sufficient or if it is necessary to have multiple overexcitabilities for advanced development, as originally conjectured by Dabrowski.

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