Bound Volume Number
VI
Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-4-2015
Capstone Advisor
Dr. Laura VanderDrift
Honors Reader
Dr, Lawrence Lewandowski
Capstone Major
Psychology
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Keywords
Openness to Experience, Emotional Expression
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
Experimental Analysis of Behavior
Abstract
Commonly regarded as one of the Big Five domains of personality, openness to experience has the social potential to deepen group connection, increase team growth and performance, and strengthen diverse relationships. In the current study I hypothesize that emotional expression on the part of an actor has the potential to increase the levels of openness to experience of the audience. To test this hypothesis, I administered the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) to assess baseline levels of openness to experience, randomly assigned participants to view either three videos high in levels of emotional expressivity or three videos low in emotional expressivity, and administered the same self-report measures of openness after these experiences. I then compared the levels of openness to experience endorsed by participants after experiencing the videos. My results support my hypothesis: participants who watched videos exhibiting high emotional expression showed significantly higher levels of openness than did participants who watched videos exhibiting low emotional expression. Ancillary analyses revealed that the impact of the videos on openness was significantly mediated by how much emotional expression the participant perceived the speaker to be displaying, rather than any other element of the videos (e.g., emotionality of the topic, warmth of the speaker). These findings have many practical implications for social and group situations, given the range of potential benefits that the literature suggests openness to experience has for individuals.
Recommended Citation
Golomb-Leavitt, Amalia, "Expanding Openness: The Effect of Actor Emotional Expression on Audience Openness to Experience" (2015). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 862.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/862
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
