Big Five Personality Factors and Facets as Predictors of Openness to Diversity

ABSTRACT

Openness to diversity is a crucial component of cultural competence needed in the increasingly diversified modern society and a necessary condition for benefitting from diversity contacts and interventions (e.g., diversity training, cultural courses). Responding to the recent call for more research on personality and its relation to diversity outcomes, we examined the associations between Big Five personality (i.e., Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness) higher order factors and lower order facets and universal-diverse orientation (i.e., open attitude of appreciating human universality and diversity; Miville et al., 1999). In the Study 1 (N = 338) web survey on Big Five factors, Openness to Experience and Agreeableness were associated with universal-diverse orientation significantly. In the Study 2 (N = 176) paper survey on both Big Five factors and facets, Openness to Experience, low Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness, and various lower-order facets of all the Big Five personality were associated with universal-diverse orientation significantly. Practical implications were suggested on how personality facets could be incorporated into current diversity interventions to enhance their effectiveness of promoting openness to diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Big Five personality
• diversity interventions
• openness to diversity
• universal-diverse orientation

Author Notes

Suejung Han is an assistant professor of clinical and counseling psychology at Illinois State University. Her research focuses on applying personality, attachment, and motivational theories to diversity issues and disordered eating behaviors.

M. Carole Pistole is an emeritus professor of counseling psychology at Purdue University. Her research focuses on attachment theory and its application to various relationships (e.g., romantic, counseling, supervision) and psychological outcomes (e.g., international student adjustments).

Funding

This study was supported by Faculty Diversity Research Award granted to the first author by the University of Wisconsin System Institute on Race and Ethnicity.