What Your Taste in Art Reveals About Your Personality

Your taste in art is shaped more by your personality than by your age, gender, or background — and one trait above all others predicts it. Across dozens of studies, Openness to Experience (one of the five broad dimensions measured by the Big Five model, also called the Five Factor Model or OCEAN) is the trait most consistently linked to what people find beautiful, complex, or worth hanging on a wall. People who score high in Openness gravitate toward abstract, modern, and challenging work; those who prefer traditional or representational art tend to be higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and lower in Openness. The effect is real but modest: personality explains only a slice of why any given person likes a given painting, and preference is shaped by experience as much as by temperament.

What the largest study of art taste found

The clearest evidence comes from a 2009 study led by psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, run through the BBC and drawing on more than 90,000 participants aged 13 to 90. Respondents rated how much they liked 24 paintings across four styles — Cubist, Renaissance, Impressionist, and Japanese — and completed a Big Five personality questionnaire. Openness to Experience was the only trait that consistently predicted preference across most styles, with correlations of roughly .17 to .21 for Cubist, Renaissance, and Japanese works. Impressionist paintings were the exception: they were favored by people who were more Agreeable and Conscientious, and the link to Openness was essentially zero. In short, the study confirmed what smaller experiments had hinted — personality matters more than demographics when it comes to which paintings we like.

Why Openness to Experience is the “artistic personality” trait

Openness to Experience describes how much a person seeks novelty, imagination, and aesthetic experience. A 2014 meta-analysis by Connelly, Ones, Davies, and Birkland, pooling 106 samples with more than 35,000 participants, identified four core facets of Openness, and one of them is literally “aestheticism”: a sensitivity to beauty, art, and emotional experience. This aestheticism facet is the mechanism behind the art-taste link — people high in Openness do not just tolerate unusual work, they actively enjoy the challenge of interpreting it. That is why researchers such as Chamorro-Premuzic describe Openness as the central component of what they call the “artistic personality,” even though being high in Openness does not make someone an artist.

What the other four Big Five traits add

The remaining traits matter too, but their effects are smaller and less consistent. Agreeableness and Conscientiousness tilt preference toward warmer, more traditional, and representational styles — the same 2009 study found small positive links between these traits and liking Impressionist art. Neuroticism shows up mainly in the emotional tone people are drawn to, with some research linking it to a preference for more emotionally intense or negative-valence work. Extraversion relates weakly to representational and surreal styles but barely predicts overall taste. The takeaway is that no single trait other than Openness moves the needle much on its own, which is why a full personality profile matters more than any one label.

Openness versus the other traits, in plain terms

To make this concrete: a person who scores high on Openness but low on Conscientiousness is far more likely to fill a room with abstract prints and challenging photography, while someone high on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness but lower on Openness often prefers calm, familiar, representational scenes. Neither pattern is “better” — they are simply different expressions of temperament and character traits, and both show up across the 16 personality types.

Preference is not the same as emotional response

Liking a painting and being moved by it are related but separate. Research by Paul Silvia and colleagues in 2015 found that Openness predicted how strongly people reported feelings of awe in response to images of nature and music, with correlations around .35 to .48 — far stronger than any other Big Five trait. This suggests high-Openness people do not just prefer unusual art; they are more likely to be emotionally transported by it, experiencing the “chills” or wonder that make a museum visit memorable. Aesthetic sensitivity, in other words, shapes both the canvas you choose and how deeply it affects your emotional experience.

How strong is the link, really?

It is easy to overstate these findings. Across the literature, personality traits typically explain less than 10 percent of the variation in any individual’s art preferences, and the correlations are modest even for Openness. Context, culture, education, and sheer exposure to art all play major roles — a 2018 longitudinal study by Schwaba and colleagues even found the relationship runs both ways, with museum and concert attendance nudging Openness upward over time. Personality sets a tendency, not a destiny: knowing your traits helps explain your leanings, but it does not lock you into a single style.

What this means for understanding your own taste

The practical value is self-awareness, not box-checking. If you consistently dislike abstract work, it may reflect a genuine preference for order and clarity rather than a gap to fix — and if you love challenging art, that curiosity likely spills into how you read, travel, and learn. A free Big Five and 16-type assessment such as the one at personalitree.com can show your Openness and aestheticism-style tendencies alongside the rest of your profile, giving you a concrete starting point for reflection rather than a vague hunch. The goal is to notice your patterns, not to label yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Can a personality test really predict which art I’ll like?

It can predict tendencies, not certainties. Openness to Experience is the strongest signal — people high in it lean toward abstract and modern styles — but personality explains only a small share of individual taste, so two people with similar scores can still prefer very different art.

Which personality type likes abstract art the most?

There is no single “abstract-art personality type,” but high Openness is the most reliable marker. Within the 16-type framework (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator system), intuitive and perceiving types such as INFP or ENTP often score higher on Openness, which is why they statistically tilt toward less conventional, more ambiguous art. If you want to see your own standing, a free Big Five and 16-type assessment at personalitree.com takes about ten minutes and reports your Openness score directly.

Does liking traditional art mean I’m closed-minded?

No. Preferring representational or Impressionist work is usually linked to higher Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, not to a lack of curiosity. Taste in art is one small window into personality, not a verdict on your intellect or values.

Can my art taste change over time?

Yes. Preference shifts with exposure, education, and life experience, and research suggests engaging with art can itself nudge traits like Openness upward. What you liked at 20 may feel flat by 40, and that change is normal rather than a sign something is wrong.

Is the link between personality and art preference the same across cultures?

The broad pattern — Openness predicting interest in unconventional art — appears in Western samples and large international studies, but the specific styles people prefer vary by culture and exposure. Demographics influence taste far less than personality does, but they are not irrelevant.