Openness to experience as related to organismic valuing1

Abstract

lthough many studies have been done in the framework of Rogerian theory, few have mcluded the constructs of openness to experience and organismic valumg Yet these occupy a central place m the structure of Rogers' (1959) theories of therapy, personality, and psychological adjustment, and as such deserve extensive study The purpose of the present study was to test the Rogerian proposition that openness to experience and orgamsmic valuing are positively related m a normal population Because of the breadth of the definitions of these constructs, a strategy of conceptual-operational coordmation advocated by Fiske (1966) was followed Each of the two large constructs was analyzed into several constituent, but smaller, subconstructs, which would presumably be more congruent with measurement operations Openness to experience, accordmg to Rogers (1959) refers to the complete availability of all stimulation to awareness, and to a perceptual-symbolic process whose function is to keep expenence and symbolization congruent Organismic valumg, on the other hand, is defined as "an on-gomg process in which values are never fixed and rigid, but experiences are bemg accurately symbolized and contmually and freshly valued m terms of satisfactions organismically expenenced [Rogers, 1959, p 210] " It IS a type of valuing process m which actions are based upon the values of the person rather than upon introjected or external values.

Differential relationships of four forms of novelty experiencing.

“…Measures of three additional constructs in the novelty domain were also included. The 40-item form of the Similes Preference Inventory, developed by Pearson and Maddi (1966) and shortened in a later paper (Pearson, 1969), was included as a measure of the active tendency toward interoceptive variety. Because the two internal forms of novelty experiencing and the tendency toward interoceptive variety are identical with respect to source of stimulation, positive correlations were predicted between the two internal scales of the Novelty Experiencing Scale and the Similes Preference Inventory.…”

A rational analysis of Rogers's concept of openness to experience1

“…However, Rogers is very clear about wammg about the use of such techniques. He states, "the more we try to infer what IS present m the phenomenal field but not conscious (as m mterpretmg projective techniques), the more complex grow the inferences until the mterpretation of the chent's projections may merely become an illustration of the chmcian's projections" (1951, P-495)-Even m the current experiencing mode, however, the experimenter must infer and specify the assumptions which coordinate the stimulus doiBam of the concept and the actual stimuh presented to the subjects Withm the framework of the present analysis, it must be assumed that the actual stimuh used provide a valid mdex of self-relevant, affective stimulation For example, a word association task composed of 20 affective words was developed as a measure of the Attention-Recognition phase in a recent study (Pearson, 1969). The working assumption coordinatmg those stimuli with the domain of self-relevant, affective stimulation was that those affective words, by virtue of their affective connotations would, as a class, ehcit emotional responses in the subjects, thereby definmg them as self-relevant Therefore, responses to such words would be representative of subjects' responses to self-relevant, affective stimulation.…”

“…Within the current experiencing mode, other specific pro-cedures could also be devised and coordinated with tJie separate phases of (^>enness to affective experience. A task mvolvmg lmagmed life situations was used to measure the Reaction phase (Pearson, 1969) In contrast to measures which utilize different sets of stimuh, the entire senes of phases could be measured at different points An ideal settmg for this sequential measurement would be m verbal psychotherapy where persons are dealmg with meanmgful life events. Although subjects would have different problems, and therefore, different sets of stunuh on the content level, it could be argued that such sets of stimuh are functionally equivalent In fact, much of the pioneermg work of Butler, Rice, and Wagstaff (1961) and Gendlm (1962) can be viewed m this light DISCUSSION In the present paper, Rogers's (1959) concept of openness to expenence has been, analyzed m great detail m order to construct a defimtion which would permit a more specified coordination between the concept and its measures.…”

“…Although the empirical results obtamed thus far have mdicated only modest support for this particular conceptualization of openness to experience (Pearson 1968(Pearson , 1969, only two measures have been developed and studied. Civen the comphcated nature of even tihis one concept, it seems premature to judge the fniitfulness of either the conceptualization or the strategy that guided it.…”

“…Finally, conceptual lmphcations for the development of appropnate methodology are discussed. Methodological and empirical considerations are presented in other papers (Pearson 1968(Pearson , 1969. Although openness to expenence and defensiveness form a continuum, and are perfect inverse covariates according to Rogers (1959)' t^® concept erf openness to experience was accorded centrality in the present analysis because it represents the normative process which is disrupted by tl^ learned defensive processes, namely denial and distortion.…”