Feelings (Openness facet)
A facet of Big Five Openness measuring receptivity to and awareness of inner emotional experience. High scorers have rich, differentiated emotional lives; low scorers experience emotion more flatly.
Feelings (in the Openness sense) is not the same as Agreeableness or Neuroticism. It measures how much access a person has to the texture and nuance of their own emotions — whether they can distinguish "anxious" from "ashamed", "wistful" from "sad".
High Feelings correlates negatively with alexithymia (the inability to identify and describe one's emotions). It predicts success in therapy, in writing, in any work that requires emotional discrimination.
Low Feelings is not emotional coldness — it is reduced introspective access. A person low on this facet may feel things strongly but find them harder to name, label, or sort into categories.
Source: Costa & McCrae (1992). NEO-PI-R Professional Manual.
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