Does Your Personality Type Predict What You Read? What the Big Five Research Shows
Yes — but only modestly. Across dozens of studies using the Big Five model (also called the Five Factor Model or OCEAN model), the trait most consistently linked to reading is Openness to Experience: people high in openness tend to own more books, describe themselves as well-read, and gravitate toward fiction, poetry, and ideas-heavy non-fiction. Conscientiousness and Extraversion show smaller, more specific patterns, while Agreeableness and Neuroticism barely move the needle in most samples. The links are real but weak — personality explains only a small slice of why any one person picks up a book. Just as important, the arrow may run both ways: a substantial body of research suggests that reading, especially fiction, can sharpen empathy and even nudge personality itself. So your bookshelf says something about you, but it is a faint signal, not a verdict.
What Researchers Actually Measured
To study reading and personality, psychologists typically pair a short personality questionnaire — most often a Big Five or Five Factor Model inventory — with questions about how much people read, which formats they use, and which genres they prefer. The Big Five are five broad personality dimensions — Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism — that together capture most of the variation in how people think, feel, and behave. If you have ever taken a personality test, these are almost certainly the dimensions it reported.
Most studies find only low-to-modest correlations between any single trait and reading behavior, so the patterns below describe group tendencies, not rules that apply to every reader.
Openness — The Trait Most Tied to Being a Reader
Openness to Experience is the Big Five dimension associated with curiosity, imagination, and an appetite for new ideas. Again and again, it is the trait that predicts reading volume: in a study of 935 adults across three languages, people who scored high on openness were more likely to own, buy, and read books and to call themselves well-read. They were also the ones who said they had already written, or wanted to write, a book of their own.
Openness is the single most reliable personality signal of a person who reads widely and identifies as a reader.
Fiction, Empathy, and the “Bookworm” Stereotype
One of the most-cited lines of research comes from psychologist Raymond Mar and colleagues. In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, they found that lifetime exposure to fiction — but not non-fiction — predicted better performance on empathy and social-acumen tests, even after controlling for intelligence. A follow-up in 2009 linked fiction reading directly to higher empathy scores. The likely mechanism is simulation: following characters’ inner lives appears to exercise the same mental muscles we use to understand real people. Understanding your own profile is easier than ever — tools such as personalitree.com provide free Big Five and 16-type tests you can take in a few minutes.
Frequent fiction readers tend to score higher on social cognition, though the relationship is correlational and the direction of cause is still debated.
Conscientiousness — Reading With a Purpose
Conscientiousness describes people who are organized, self-disciplined, and goal-directed. In reading studies, high scorers don’t necessarily read for pleasure more often, but they read more for work, study, and self-improvement, and they lean toward science writing and current-events non-fiction. In the 935-adult study, people who saw themselves as thorough and diligent reported reading more because they had to read for their jobs or studies.
Conscientious readers treat reading as a tool — for learning, planning, and getting things done — more than as pure leisure.
Extraversion — The Social Reader Who May Skip the Page
Extraversion is the trait of being outgoing and energized by other people. Several studies report that extraverts read slightly less in print overall, but their preferences are distinctive: they are drawn to people-focused material — celebrity news, romance, and social magazines — and to stimulating “dark” or “cerebral” entertainment such as thrillers, history, and business books. A 2011 study of more than 3,000 people found extroverts enjoyed both “dark” entertainment like horror and erotica and “cerebral” fare like history and science.
Extraverts also stand out for one format choice: they are the readers most likely to prefer audiobooks, fitting stories into a busy, social life on the go.
Agreeableness and Neuroticism — The Quieter Links
Agreeableness reflects cooperation and warmth toward others. Its clearest reading signal is a pull toward “communal” content — romance and relationship-focused stories. Neuroticism, the tendency toward negative emotions and stress sensitivity, shows the weakest and least consistent ties to reading; where it appears, it is sometimes linked to emotionally intense fiction such as romance or young-adult drama, but many large samples find almost no association.
Unlike openness and conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism explain very little about how much or what most people read.
So What Does Your Bookshelf Say About You?
Genre preferences line up with traits in recognizable ways. Romance and relationship stories tend to attract more agreeable readers; literary, poetic, and “aesthetic” material draws the open and imaginative; science, history, and business reading pulls in both the conscientious and the extraverted; and darker genres such as horror show small links to extraversion and openness. The 2011 study of more than 3,000 people also found that open readers favored art, poetry, and foreign films alongside books.
Genre is a softer clue than volume: it reflects taste and mood as much as fixed personality.
Does Reading Change Your Personality, Too?
Here the causal story gets interesting. While personality predicts reading, reading may also shape the person. A review by Maja Djikic and Keith Oatley argues that engaging with emotionally rich fiction can produce small, real changes in personality and reliably boosts empathy and theory-of-mind — our ability to infer what others are thinking. In other words, the relationship is bidirectional: who you are influences what you read, and what you read quietly influences who you become.
Reading is less a mirror of a fixed self and more a gentle, two-way conversation with it.
Putting It to Use
If you want to see where you land, a free Big Five or 16-type assessment at personalitree.com takes about ten minutes and returns a plain-language profile you can compare against these patterns. The practical takeaway isn’t to label yourself — it’s to notice your defaults. A low-openness reader who pushes into one unfamiliar genre a month, or an extravert who swaps one commute for an audiobook, is using self-awareness to widen the loop between personality and reading rather than being stuck inside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a personality test tell me what books I’ll like?
Not precisely. Personality explains only a small part of reading choice, and genre taste mixes in mood, culture, and life experience. Traits offer loose tendencies — openness toward literary fiction, conscientiousness toward non-fiction — not predictions you can bank on.
Are fiction readers really more empathetic?
Research by Raymond Mar and others links frequent fiction reading to higher empathy and social-cognition scores, but the studies are correlational. It remains unclear whether reading makes people more empathetic or whether empathetic people simply read more fiction.
Do introverts read more than extroverts?
On average, extraverts read slightly less print overall, though they favor audiobooks and people-focused genres. Introverts aren’t automatically bookworms; the strongest reader signal is openness, not introversion.
Which Big Five trait best predicts being a reader?
Openness to Experience is the most consistent predictor of reading volume, book ownership, and a “well-read” self-image. Conscientiousness predicts purposeful, work-related reading, while the other three traits show weak or inconsistent links.
Can reading actually change my personality?
Possibly, in small ways. Reviews of the fiction-empathy literature suggest engaging stories can temporarily shift traits and reliably improve empathy and perspective-taking, so the personality–reading link runs in both directions.