| Field: | Creativity research / differential psychology |
| Study type: | Meta-analysis (synthesizing 63 individual studies) |
| Sample: | 24,298 participants |
| Geographic scope: | International (various countries and cultures) |
| Journal: | Personality and Individual Differences |
| Authors: | Grajzel, Acar & Singer |
| Year: 2023 | 2023 |
What Was the study about?
What does our personality tell us about how creatively we think? This meta-analysis synthesized 63 studies with a total of more than 24,000 participants to investigate the relationship between the Big Five and what is known as divergent thinking. Divergent thinking refers to the ability to generate as many different and original answers as possible to an open-ended question – one of the most reliable indicators of creative potential.
What did the study find?
- The Openness and Consistency dimension was by far the most relevant: People high in Openness consistently performed better on creativity tests (r = 0.20).
- The Extraversion and Introversion dimension showed a smaller but still measurable association (r = 0.11). People with higher levels of Extraversion tended to produce more ideas and a wider variety of them.
- The other three dimensions – Conscientiousness and Impulsivity, Agreeableness and Competitiveness, and Sensitivity and Stability – showed no meaningful association with divergent thinking.
What does this actually mean?
A little background: Divergent thinking is not the same as creativity, but it is one of its most important components. Researchers measure it using tasks such as: “Name as many unusual uses for a brick as possible.” Responses are evaluated based on how many ideas someone generates (fluency), how different they are (flexibility), and how unusual they are (originality). Divergent thinking is the counterpart to convergent thinking, in which there is exactly one correct solution.
The finding of this meta-analysis is remarkably clear. Of all five personality dimensions, only Openness is robustly associated with creative thinking – across all contexts examined. In other words, whether the data came from college students in the United States, school students in Asia, or working adults in Europe, and whether verbal or figural tests were used, the association remained stable. This makes the finding particularly reliable.
Just as revealing is what does not play a role: According to these data, whether a person is disciplined, cooperative, or emotionally stable tells us nothing about their creative potential. This contradicts a widespread assumption – namely, that creativity is primarily a matter of self-discipline.
For the workplace, this has practical implications. Creative thinking in teams probably cannot be fostered through processes and methods alone. Just as important may be whether a team’s composition accommodates different personality profiles – and whether its culture allows unconventional ways of thinking instead of relying on tried-and-tested routines.
And for you personally: If your Myself at Work profile places you on the Openness side, there is a good chance that you also have greater creative potential. And if you lean more toward Consistency, that does not mean creativity is out of reach – but it may emerge through different avenues.
Myself at Work – European by design, grounded in humanism
The Myself at Work offering is, of course, fully GDPR-compliant: No data is transferred outside Europe. Hosting, processing, and evaluation all take place entirely within the EU.
Myself at Work consistently avoids negative value judgments. Different personality traits – such as working styles, communication preferences, or specific requirements for collaboration and the work environment – are understood not as deviations, but as resources. The Big Five–based results are interpreted within a humanistic view of human nature – one that regards diversity, development, and context as indispensable dimensions of personality.
