The Emotionality Facet (Openness).
Emotionality under Openness is one of the most confusing facet names in the Big Five, because a similarly named idea sits under Neuroticism. Here, Emotionality means openness to feelings - being in touch with your inner emotional life and valuing it as a source of meaning. It is not emotional instability or a tendency toward negative emotion, which is the Neuroticism side of personality entirely.
Emotionality (a facet of Openness to Experience)
Emotionality is one of the six facets of Openness to Experience in the Big Five. It captures openness to your own inner feelings: how aware you are of your emotions, how much you value them, and how readily you experience a wide and differentiated emotional range. It is not the same as the Emotionality of Neuroticism - this facet is about access to and appreciation of feeling, not about how often you feel anxious, sad, or upset.
This page explains what the Openness facet of Emotionality measures, what high and low scores look like, how it differs from both the Neuroticism version and the other Openness facets, and the trade-offs at each end.
What Emotionality measures
Emotionality is the degree to which you are open to and aware of your own feelings: noticing emotional nuance, treating feelings as informative, and experiencing a rich and varied emotional palette. High scorers register their inner states in fine detail and let emotion inform how they understand the world; low scorers are less attuned to feelings and tend to set them aside in favour of the practical or factual.
The key clarification is direction, not intensity of distress. This facet is about access to the full emotional range - including positive, subtle, and aesthetic feelings - not about how much negative emotion you carry. Being high here means you feel things vividly and value that, whether the feelings are pleasant or painful.
High and low
High Emotionality shows up as emotional depth and attunement: feelings are noticed, named, and trusted as a guide, and the emotional texture of experiences - art, relationships, memories - is felt keenly. It supports empathy, self-insight, and a vivid, full-colour inner life.
Low Emotionality is not the same as cold or damaged. Low scorers are simply less focused on their inner feelings and more even and matter-of-fact, keeping emotion in the background while they attend to facts and tasks. They can seem hard to read or slow to register emotional undercurrents, but they often stay steady and clear-headed in situations where strong feeling would only get in the way.
How it differs from the other Openness facets (and from Neuroticism)
First, the crucial distinction: the Openness facet of Emotionality is about being open to feelings, while Neuroticism is about negative emotion and instability. You can score high on this Openness facet - deeply in touch with a wide emotional range - and still be calm and emotionally stable; the two live on different traits and do not move together.
Within Openness, Emotionality is only the open-to-feelings facet. It is distinct from Imagination (a vivid inner fantasy life), Artistic Interests (sensitivity to art and beauty), Adventurousness (appetite for new experiences and variety), Intellect (curiosity about ideas and abstract problems), and Liberalism (readiness to challenge tradition and authority). These can diverge: someone high on Emotionality but low on Intellect is deeply feeling but not especially drawn to theory, while someone high on Intellect but low on Emotionality reasons readily about ideas yet stays detached from their own inner states.
Trade-offs
At the high end, being wide open to feeling can mean emotions colour judgement more than you would like, that intense experiences are harder to set down, or that you absorb the emotional weather of the people around you. At the very high end the inner emotional world can become absorbing enough to crowd out detached analysis. At the low end, the cost is reduced emotional self-insight and a tendency to miss what you or others are feeling, which can read as distance in close relationships. Neither pole is better - they suit different demands, and the useful move is to know which one you are and adjust where feeling should lead and where it should wait.
Also relevant: All 30 facets explained
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean to score high on Emotionality (the Openness facet)?
You are highly open to and aware of your own feelings - you notice emotional nuance, value emotions as meaningful, and experience a rich, varied emotional range. It is the "open to feelings" component of Openness, and it reflects depth of feeling, not emotional instability.
Is the Openness facet of Emotionality the same as Neuroticism?
No, and this is the most common confusion. The Openness facet is about being open to and aware of your feelings - their richness and value. Neuroticism is about how much negative emotion and instability you experience. You can be high on this Openness facet and still be calm and emotionally stable; they sit on different traits.
Is low Emotionality the same as being cold or emotionally damaged?
No. Low Emotionality means you are simply less attuned to your inner feelings and more even and matter-of-fact, with emotion kept in the background. It is independent of the other Openness facets and is not a deficit, so a low-Emotionality person can be warm, steady, and effective while paying less attention to emotional nuance.
How do I find my Emotionality score?
Our 300-item Big Five test scores all 30 facets, including the Openness facet of Emotionality, against population norms; the 120-item form also resolves the facets. The shorter 50-item and 10-item forms give your Openness trait score but do not break it into facets.
References
- Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1995). Domains and facets: Hierarchical personality assessment using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 64(1), 21-50.
- DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 880-896.
- Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89.
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