Openness to experience may in fact be a domain of the FFM, as assessed by the NEO PI-R, that warrants further consideration regarding its conceptualization and assessment. The first three scales of the NEO PI-R (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, and openness) were developed prior to an interest in assessing the lexical Big Five (Costa & McCrae, 1985) and the original conceptualization of openness within the NEO three-factor model was based on the work of Coan (1974) describing “the optimal personality,” Rokeach (1960) describing “the open mind,” and Loevinger and Wessler (1970) measuring an individual's level of ego development. High levels of openness were considered to be suggestive of persons with high levels of a self-actualizing or self-realizing psychological mindedness (Costa & McCrae, 1976, 1978), a formulation that is quite inconsistent with a maladaptive variant of high openness.
