According to officials from the University of Oregon, the big five personality dimensions are extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience, as seen on personality test results. While many of these traits are connected, until a recent study, researchers have failed to find a link between agreeableness and openness to experience, which includes creativity.

The study by researchers at the University of North Carolina broke down the agreeableness category into two dimensions, including honesty-humility and agreeableness versus anger. Then, about 1,300 adults were asked to take a personality test as well as a self-assessed creativity report. The researchers found that participants who scored low in the honesty-humility category tended to say they were more creative than other individuals.

While this study was in line with past beliefs that arrogance may be linked to creativity, researchers said they plan to perform an additional study in which creativity is assessed by an outside source rather than the participants themselves.

"Honesty–humility deserves much more attention in future work on personality and creativity," the researchers wrote in their report.