Which personality traits predict creativity?

Which personality traits predict creativity?

The reference point is a meta-analytic review of personality and creative achievement in science and art (Feist, 1998). It pooled studies across three contrasts: scientists against non-scientists, more creative scientists against less creative ones, and artists against non-artists. The traits were then classified under the Five-Factor Model, the taxonomy that came out of decades of lexical research rather than from any single study (Goldberg, 1993).

The picture that came back was consistent. Creative people were more open to new experiences and less conventional. They were less conscientious. They were more self-confident and self-accepting, more driven and ambitious, more dominant, and also more hostile and more impulsive. The largest effects appeared for openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility and impulsivity (Feist, 1998).

Two features of that list are worth noticing. It is not a flattering portrait, which is a point in its favour, because a description assembled from data has no reason to flatter. And the dispositions fall into four groups, social, cognitive, motivational and affective, so creativity in these samples was not one trait but a way of thinking, wanting and reacting, arriving together.

The review reports the ranking of the largest effects without numeric effect sizes, so this page gives none.

Do artists and scientists have different profiles?

They were studied separately, and the answer is a shared core rather than opposite types. The distinguishing dimensions showed stability over time and across the different kinds of creative people examined (Feist, 1998).

The two profiles rest on different comparisons. Artists were compared with non-artists, while creative scientists were compared with other scientists, a group already selected for intellectual interests and training. A trait difference is always relative to whoever stood on the other side of it, so the two contrasts cannot be laid on top of each other as one scale.

What survives that caution is the shared part: in both domains, the people producing creative work were the more open, less conventional, more driven and more self-assured members of their field. The popular image of the temperamental artist and the orderly scientist is not what the data described.

What are the two aspects of Openness?

Openness is not one thing. Factor analyses of 75 facet scales from two major Big Five inventories found two distinct but correlated aspects inside each of the Big Five, a level between the broad domain and the narrow facets, giving 10 aspects in total (DeYoung et al., 2007). Within Openness, one aspect gathers intellectual engagement, ideas, reasoning and curiosity about how things work. The other gathers aesthetic and imaginative engagement, absorption in art, fantasy and perception.

The two aspects were characterised at item level, measured with a 100-item instrument, the Big Five Aspect Scales, and they line up with 10 genetic factors identified in earlier work on facet structure (DeYoung et al., 2007). The split is not a convenience of wording. Something real separates the person who wants to understand the mechanism from the person who wants to look at the thing for longer.

The obvious next step, matching the intellect aspect to scientific creativity and the imaginative aspect to artistic creativity, is a reading rather than a finding. Neither the aspects paper nor the creativity meta-analysis tested it. It is a useful way to hold your own profile and should not be quoted as evidence.

How does each trait relate to creative work?

Each row reports a group average from the same review. Creative people in these samples differed from their comparison group in this direction, by an amount that leaves the two groups heavily overlapped. No row describes an individual.

What this evidence does not mean

Being disorganised will not make anyone creative. The review compared groups that had already produced creative work and asked how they differed, and it makes no causal claim in either direction. Lower conscientiousness accompanying creative achievement is not the same as lower conscientiousness producing it, and the difference between those two sentences is the whole point.

The costs of that reading are real. Conscientiousness predicts academic performance largely independently of intelligence, and once earlier school results are accounted for it adds as much to the prediction of later results as intelligence does (Poropat, 2009). Treating disarray in your working life as a creative credential trades something measurable for something unmeasured.

• Hostility and impulsivity are descriptions, not instructions. They appeared among the largest effects (Feist, 1998), which is a finding about groups, and imitating it is unlikely to produce the work.
• A profile is not a permit. Openness measures interest and receptiveness; creative achievement is work, skill and finished output, and the second does not follow from the first.
• The absence of a trait closes nothing. The overlap between creative and comparison groups is large, so many highly creative people score in the middle or low on every trait in that table.

How do you use your own profile?

The useful frame is not a score to envy but a fit to arrange. Intelligence, personality and vocational interests overlap rather than standing apart as independent domains, and they cluster into four trait complexes: social, clerical and conventional, science and mathematics, and intellectual and cultural (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997). Where your interests, abilities and dispositions already agree, creative effort meets less friction.

• Read the aspect, not just the domain. A high Openness score built on ideas and reasoning points somewhere different from one built on aesthetics and imagination (DeYoung et al., 2007), and the domain score hides which you have.
• Borrow the missing half rather than becoming it. If drive and self-assurance are the part you lack, a collaborator, a deadline or a commitment to show the work supplies it from outside.
• Keep the conscientiousness. The finding describes a group; it does not recommend abandoning the habits that get work finished. Most creative output comes from people who returned to it on an ordinary afternoon.

How does Wellington measure this?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot is 60 questions, about 7 minutes, covering 6 dimensions, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience, Honesty-Humility, each with a written page. Every trait is reported as a percentile against the reference sample, in one of three bands, Quiet below the 30th percentile, Balanced to the 70th, High above. The bands and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. The first ten questions are answered before anything is asked; after question ten you sign in with an email so answers are saved and results can be shown. There is no card. The norms are provisional while the norming sample is completed, and the report says so.

The Wellington Membership, $4.99 a month, adds the Portrait, 336 questions in 4 chapters, to reach 90 traits. That is where the detail behind an Openness score appears as separate scales, including creativity and imagination, alongside creativity as a character strength from the 24 VIA strengths, which asks about producing original and useful ideas rather than about receptiveness to them. Two people with the same Openness percentile often read differently at that level. It then continues toward 255 traits across eight domains and retests the earliest ones.

Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional. A percentile on a creativity scale says how you described yourself against a reference sample, not how creative your work is, and no questionnaire can judge that. Wellington is not designed for hiring or selection, and you can export or delete your data at any time.

Questions people ask

Is Openness the same as being creative?

No. Openness describes receptiveness to ideas, art, feeling and new experience, and it is the trait most consistently linked to creative achievement (Feist, 1998). Achievement itself is finished work, needing skill, effort and often the drive and self-assurance that also appeared in that profile. Plenty of highly open people produce nothing, and a trait score cannot tell you which group you are in.

Are creative people less conscientious?

On average, in that review, yes, and it was among the largest effects (Feist, 1998). The comparison is between groups that had already produced creative work and groups that had not, so it describes an association rather than a cause. Conscientiousness also predicts academic performance largely independently of intelligence (Poropat, 2009), so reading it as advice to become less organised is a poor trade.

Do artists and scientists have different personalities?

Less than the stereotype suggests. The review examined artists and scientists in separate contrasts and found the distinguishing dispositions stable across both, with openness foremost (Feist, 1998). The two contrasts used different comparison groups, artists against non-artists and creative scientists against other scientists, so the profiles cannot be laid directly on top of each other.

Can I become more creative if my Openness is low?

The evidence here is about who differs from whom, not about how to change, so this page cannot offer a method. It does suggest the traits arrived as a bundle of thinking, wanting and reacting, and the wanting part responds to arrangements: deadlines, collaborators, a commitment to show the work.