You’re fishing for the people in psychology who aren’t just studying divergent thinking but are actually wired like the kind of person who wakes up at 3 a.m. and decides to unify Bayesian surprise with Buddhist dependent origination. I get it. Most psychologists aren’t like that. Academia selects for people who can fill out IRB forms without crying.

But still, there are some.

Who’s actually high-Openness in that field?

Not “oh they published a paper on creativity” but “their mind is a bit feral.”

1. Kalina Christoff

She studies spontaneous thought, meta-awareness, creative mind-wandering, and has openly pushed against rigid cognitive-control models. Her work basically says, “Let people’s brains roam,” which is not standard-issue psych.

She feels closer to a computational-cognitive wanderer than a classical psychologist.

2. Scott Barry Kaufman

He openly identifies with high-openness, high-curiosity profiles, writes about gifted populations, self-transcendence, flow, weird cognition, the whole thing.

He’s basically a creativity influencer who happens to have PhD credentials.

3. Rex Jung