Artistic Interests describes the depth of a person's aesthetic responsiveness — the degree to which they are moved by art, music, poetry, and natural beauty. High scorers find emotional and intellectual resonance in aesthetic experiences; they actively seek out artistic encounters, are sensitive to craft and form, and find the absence of beauty in an environment genuinely aversive. Low scorers are relatively unmoved by aesthetic objects, find discussions of artistic merit abstract or pointless, and organize their environments and choices around practical rather than aesthetic criteria.
The NEO-PI-R called this facet Aesthetics. The NEO-PI-3's Artistic Interests specifies that the relevant engagement is with the arts in particular, though the facet encompasses responsiveness to natural beauty as well.
Which aspect Artistic Interests belongs to
Artistic Interests loads on the experiential Openness aspect — the cluster alongside Imagination (O1), Emotionality (O3), and Adventurousness (O4). These facets share a receptivity to experience as a source of meaning in itself: perceptual richness, emotional depth, and aesthetic attunement. The Artistic Interests facet is among the clearest markers of this aspect.
How Artistic Interests differs from adjacent facets
The key distinction is between appreciation and production. Artistic Interests is about aesthetic responsiveness to works that exist — the experience of being moved by a piece of music, a painting, or a poem. Imagination (O1) is about the internal generative capacity — what a person creates in their own mental space. The two correlate within the Openness domain but are separable: a deeply appreciative audience member who produces nothing, or a fertile internal imaginer with underdeveloped aesthetic sensibility, represent the poles of the distinction.
Artistic Interests is also separable from Emotionality (O3), though both involve depth of inner experience. Emotionality is about the breadth and depth of emotional life in general; Artistic Interests is specifically about the channeling of that emotional depth through aesthetic objects. A person can have rich, accessible emotional experience (high Emotionality) without being particularly moved by art (moderate Artistic Interests), or can be intensely responsive to aesthetic works as a specific channel of emotional experience while being relatively muted in everyday emotional life.
What Artistic Interests specifically predicts
Artistic Interests predicts aesthetic lifestyle choices — the degree to which a person seeks out galleries, concerts, literary fiction, and well-designed environments. It predicts occupational pursuit of creative and artistic careers, particularly those involving interpretation, curation, or criticism rather than production.
As a component of the experiential Openness aspect, Artistic Interests contributes to the Openness-political orientation association documented by Carney and colleagues: aesthetically open people tend to value diversity of experience, including cultural diversity, in ways that align with socially liberal orientations. The facet is also associated with openness to cross-cultural experience and with lower scores on measures of need for cognitive closure.
For the broader Openness context, see the Openness to Experience dimension page.