When openness to experience and conscientiousness are related to creative behavior: An interactional approach

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are relat ed to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theoriz ed to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is t heorized to result in low levels of creative behavior when the situation al lows for the manifestation of the trait influences. More specifically, the authors hypothesized that openness to experience would result in high level s of creative behavior if feedback valence were positive and job holders we re presented with a heuristic task that allowed them to be creative. The au thors also hypothesized that conscientiousness would result in low levels o f creative behavior if super-visors engaged in close monitoring and coworke rs were unsupportive. The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of of fice workers, and 5 out of the 6 hypotheses were supported.