Does a creative person necessarily exhibit creativity? The interaction between creative personality and positions in social networks

Existing studies examining creativity have focused on individual differences, situational factors, and their interaction, but the role of situational factors in social networks has been overlooked. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether individuals' positions in a social network interact with creative personality to affect creativity with the aim of identifying the factors that constrain or foster an individual's creativity. A total of 311 members of 15 scientific teams participated in the survey, which investigated both their friendship relations and their task-collaboration relations. This study employed network analysis and hierarchical multiple regressions, constructed a directed, weighted relation network, and analysed the interaction effect between creative personality and weighted degree in networks. The results showed that (a) creative personality positively predicts creativity, (b) there is a curvilinear relation between weighted degree and creativity, and (c) the relationship between weighted degree and creativity exhibits an inverted U-shape only for individuals with low creative personality. This study highlights the importance of individuals' social networks in promoting creativity, especially for less creative persons.