Creative Behavior

Abstract

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behavior when the situation allows for the manifestation of the trait influences. More specifically, the authors hypothesized that openness to experience would result in high levels of creative behavior if feedback valence were positive and job holders were presented with a heuristic task that allowed them to be creative. The authors also hypothesized that conscientiousness would result in low levels of creative behavior if supervisors engaged in close monitoring and coworkers were unsupportive. The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of office workers, and 5 out of the 6 hypotheses were supported.