Personality traits as predictors of work creativity: A comparison between self- and other-reports.

Abstract

Past research investigating the role of Big Five personality traits in work creativity has mostly found openness to experience and extraversion to be related to and predictive of employees’ creative behaviors and performance at work. However, these studies have been limited by the exclusive use of self-reports in measuring personality, neglecting methodological disadvantages of self-reports and the literature on personality assessment with multiple rating sources. To remedy this limitation, we report the links between Big Five personality traits and employee creativity based on both self- and peer-report measures of personality in a sample of 196 working professionals in the consulting industry. Results revealed that openness and extraversion predicted employee creativity across both personality rating sources and that in the peer-report results only, the trait agreeableness emerged as another (negative) predictor. Moreover, complementing self-reports with peer-reports noticeably improved model fit and resulted in better prediction of work creativity. Implications of the current findings for personality and creativity research are discussed.