David Eagleman's Livewired and the Adventurousness Facet (O4)

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, and Livewired is his account of a startling fact about the brain: it is not hardwired but constantly rewiring itself, physically reshaping in response to whatever you feed it. He puts the core idea simply. On his website he describes the brain as "machinery that reconfigures itself, that adjusts and adapts to whatever's going on around it to optimize its function." How much you seek out the new experience that reshapes you is, in the Big Five, one facet.

Seeking new experience that reshapes you is the Adventurousness facet

That facet is Adventurousness (O4), under Openness, how much you seek out new experiences and unfamiliar territory versus preferring the settled and known. A high scorer chases novelty; a low scorer likes routine. Eagleman's science gives that preference a physical stake, since a brain that keeps meeting new input keeps building itself, while one fed only the familiar grows narrow. Novelty, in his telling, is the raw material the brain uses to stay alive and adaptable, more than a mere taste.

What makes Livewired more than neuroscience is the implication for how you live. If the brain reshapes itself around experience, then a person high in O4, forever seeking the unfamiliar, is continuously rebuilding a richer, more flexible mind, while retreating to routine lets the machinery settle. That connects the appetite for novelty to the Intellect (O5) that keeps learning, since both feed the brain the new material it runs on. Eagleman's quiet argument is that staying open to new experience is a way of staying mentally young.

For a reader placing themselves, your O4 is a fair read on how much you reach for the new and how comfortable you are outside the familiar. High on it and Livewired gives your restlessness a rationale, since the brain rewards a life of new input. Low on it and the book is a nudge to consider that a little more novelty might keep your mind more supple. Where you sit on Adventurousness tells you how strongly you are drawn to new experience, and we take the facet apart in Adventurousness (O4).

Read the book: Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman.

See Where You Fall

Where do you actually fall? The 30-facet OCEAN personality test takes about 15 minutes and scores all five domains and the facets underneath them. Take the test

Research Citations