‘Openness‐to‐Experience’ as a Descriptor of the Student Actress Personality

Abstract

This comparative investigation examines some of the tensions, commonalities and research opportunities which arise when a school of acting is incorporated in a university faculty of social sciences. The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and a ‘Big Five’ personality questionnaire, the NEO‐PI‐R, were administered to a sample of 85 students (32 males and 53 females) at the East 15 School of Acting. The 16PF profiles were compared to those for British undergraduate norms for arts and social sciences students. Forty‐three of the female East 15 students were sample matched on age and sex with 43 undergraduate students reading educational psychology in the Department of Education and Community Studies at the University of East London. The potential actresses were found to be significantly more assertive, happy‐go‐lucky, imaginative, experimenting, forthright and tense and much less conscientious and controlled, i.e. more careless of protocol, than the potential teachers. When the 16PF secondary source traits were compared, the actresses were slightly more extraverted and anxious (p <0.01) than the educators. They were also much more independent and much less controlled (p < 0.0001). On the NEO‐PI‐R dimensions, the actresses were significantly less agreeable (p < 0.01) and very much more ‘open‐to‐experience’ (p < 0.0001). They were also likely to be much more emotionally intelligent. It is suggested that ‘openness‐to‐experience’ may be a useful descriptor of the actress personality and that there are aspects of acting training that can make a valuable contribution to teacher education.