Recently, NPR had a really fun piece on how openness to experience and adventerousness decreases with age. It follows a prominent scientist’s fury with an adventure-seeking assistant and his quest to explain why he felt so boring. He does some quick research first calling radio stations and finding out about the age of listenership for certain eras of music, then discovering how likely people are to try strange food for the first time, and finally tapping the age at which people stop getting body piercings. He concluded that for most people, windows to openness start to close for some of these things between the mid-20s to the late 30s. He notes that for the people who become the most rigid and set in their ways are people who have been in their job for a long time, and are good at it. Therefore, each new innovation represents a threat to their prominence. Of course this is not the most empirically sound study, but it does correspond to recent personality change literature that also notes the age/openness correlation. If you want to hear some Bob Marley mixed in with your psychology discussion, this is the audio clip for you.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 31 Aug 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.