Interest in truth versus beauty: Intellect and Openness reflect different pathways towards interest

• Openness and Intellect reflect different process pathways towards interest.
• Intellect reflects interest because of greater understanding.
• Openness reflects interest independent of understanding.
• Open people rely less on understanding in their experience of interest.

Openness and Intellect have been proposed as different pathways towards cognitive exploration, yet this distinction remains untested with respect to the exploratory emotion of interest. In this study we examined multi-level appraisal processes to determine whether Openness and Intellect differ in their effects on interest. University undergraduates (N = 99) rated their interest in seven literary quotations, and appraised the quotations for their novelty and understanding. Both Openness and Intellect predicted greater interest, but via different pathways. In between-person analyses, understanding mediated the Intellect/interest but not the Openness/interest relationship (i.e., high-Intellect people are more interested through greater understanding). In within-person analyses, Openness (but not Intellect) significantly moderated the understanding/interest relationship. High-Openness people experienced greater interest in difficult to understand quotations. Results highlight the need to examine within-person effects and to consider the lower-level elements of personality. These findings distinguish Openness and Intellect in terms of pathways towards interest and provide a dynamic understanding of the differences between them.