The effects of creative personality on scientist creativity

Does a creative personality make scientists more creative? Previous research on creative personality, creative behavior, and performance has been mixed, with not all studies reporting a consistent positive relationship. We propose that this is, in part, because creativity is not solely determined by traits; instead, creative individuals require a specific context to fully realize their potential to create. Using trait activation theory, we show that, as scientific creativity is becoming more dependent on teamwork, creative personality interacts with scientists' social identities and collaborative behavior to affect scientists' creativity. Multisource data collected from 547 scientists from 36 research institutes in China revealed that two dimensions of scientists' creative personality (research ability and uniqueness) exhibited a positive effect on their creativity whereas two other dimensions of their creative personality had a negative effect (self-discipline) or no effect (self-verification) on their creativity. In addition, the breadth of research communication, expertise identity, and organizational identity exhibited positive moderating effects on creative personality and scientist creativity. Specifically, when research communication breadth was high, self-discipline boosted scientist creativity; when expertise identity was high, self-verification boosted scientist creativity; and when organizational identity was high, the uniqueness dimension of scientist personality boosted scientist creativity. We discuss implications for theory and practice.