The Effect of Creators’ Personality Traits and Depression on Teamwork-Based Design Performance

Abstract

Many organizations encourage carrying out a project by teamwork for consensus building and managing risks in decision making. When working as a team, the members’ personality traits and depression may affect project performance. This study explored the personality traits and depression of creators on their design performance in teamwork. This study used the Big-Five Personality Traits Scale (Big-5) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Forty-four volunteers were chosen to participate in this study as the study subjects. A total of 11 design teams were formed based on the participants’ personality trait score and the depression score. The design performance of the participants was rated by creativity, aesthetics, and completeness. The study results showed that (1) for creativity, PT4 Neuroticism and D1 No Depression performed the best; (2) for aesthetics, PT4 Neuroticism, PT5 Openness, and D2 Mild Depression performed the best; (3) for completeness, PT5 Openness and D4 Severe Depression performed the best; and (4) for member satisfaction and work satisfaction, PT4 Neuroticism and D2 Mild Depression had the lowest scores. Therefore, the overall teamwork performance can be affected by personality traits and depression. Each individual’s personality trait and emotional expression may improve team performance via different dimensions, such as creativity, aesthetics, and completeness. Project managers should have members of different personality traits and with different emotional expression on a team as their personality traits and emotion can facilitate team collaboration.