Is Openness Really One of Your Core Values?

You might say openness is important to you, but when a colleague shares an unconventional idea, you feel that familiar instinct to dismiss it. Or you claim you value openness to experience, yet you keep choosing the same routines, the same arguments, the same safe bets. The question isn't whether openness sounds good in theory. It's whether it's actually directing your choices, or whether you've inherited the word without living the value.

Who This Is For (and Who It Is Not)

This is for someone who suspects that openness might not actually be one of their core values, even though they think it should be. You've noticed the gap between what you say matters and what you actually choose. You're willing to look honestly at your own behavior instead of defending a version of yourself that sounds better. If that's you, this will matter.

This is also for someone who has been told they lack openness and wants to understand whether that's true or whether they're simply oriented toward different values. Openness in Schwartz's framework means seeking novel experiences and independent thought. It doesn't mean being agreeable, easy-going, or free of conviction. If you're disciplined, consistent, or skeptical of change, that's not a deficiency in openness. It might mean other values sit higher in your structure.

This is not for someone who is already clear about their values and comfortable with them. If you've done this work and you know where you stand, you don't need this page. This is also not for someone looking for permission to be more open. If you're trying to convince yourself that openness matters to you, no tool will close that gap. Only a genuine shift in what you actually care about will.

What You Will Discover

You will understand whether openness is genuinely one of your top values or whether it sits lower in your hierarchy, in tension with other things that matter more to you. Schwartz's research, tested across 80 countries, shows that values exist in a circular structure. Values that are adjacent to each other are compatible, while values that sit opposite each other create real tension. If security and conformity matter more to you than openness, that's not weakness. It's clarity. You'll see the architecture of your own priorities instead of guessing.

You'll also notice where you might be performing openness instead of living it. The moment you can name that gap, you have a choice. You can either accept that openness genuinely isn't your priority and stop wasting energy pretending, or you can see clearly what would have to shift for openness to move up your list. Most people discover it's the first one. And that relief alone changes how they show up in conversations, in relationships, in work. No more defending yourself against your own values.

Common Reasons People Wait

The first hesitation is usually fear that you'll discover you're not open enough. You might worry that low openness will confirm something you've been told about yourself, or worse, make you feel trapped by your own nature. But Schwartz's framework doesn't measure whether you're "open enough." It measures what you actually prioritize. Plenty of people with high openness face real problems because they avoid commitment and consistency. Plenty of people with low openness achieve remarkable things because they can focus, follow through, and build deep expertise. The point isn't to rank higher. The point is to know the truth and work with it.

The second hesitation is that openness sounds virtuous, and you're afraid naming it as low priority will make you sound rigid or closed-minded. This is performative thinking. You're more concerned with how the answer looks than with whether it's true. And that's exactly the kind of contradiction that the values assessment catches. Once you see it clearly, you can stop organizing your life around an image and start organizing it around what actually matters to you.

The third hesitation is that you're not sure you understand what openness even is in the Schwartz framework. You might confuse it with social openness, or emotional vulnerability, or willingness to compromise. In Schwartz's model, openness specifically means seeking new experiences and independent thought. It's about curiosity, variety, and freedom of thought. Not friendliness. Not flexibility. Not agreeableness. Once you know the real definition, the assessment becomes much clearer.

The My Values assessment surfaces your core values, ranks them, and shows you the gap between what you say matters and what your actual choices reveal. That's the ground you stand on.