A Study of Creativity In Relation To Big 5 Personality Traits

The study of personality is one of the oldest areas in the science of creativity. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline or responsibility and irresponsibility. Creativity has been acknowledged as one of the most predominant factors contributing to individual performance in various domains of work and both researchers and practitioners have been devoting increasing attention to creative performance. Thus, the present investigation aimed at studying creativity in relation to Big 5 Personality Traits. The sample comprised of 40 artists (20 performing artists and 20 non-performing artists) between 25-35 years of age. For this purpose Big Five Inventory (BFI) developed by John and Srivastava (1999) was used to assess the domains of: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Creativity was assessed by using the relevant items for the virtue of Creativity from the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths Scale (VIA-IS) developed by Peterson, Park, & Seligman (2005). To achieve the objectives of the study, inter correlations and t-ratios were calculated. The results found significant correlation ship between creativity and extraversion showing that more creative artists expressed more extraversion than the less creative ones. Also, there were no significant difference between performing and non-performing artists in creativity and the big 5 personality traits.