The researchers induced people into a creative mindset by having them complete a ‘scrambled sentence task’. Here, participants were asked to make a series of four word sentences out of five words presented in scrambled order. For example, when given the words sky, is, why, blue, and the, a participant might write the sentence, “the sky is blue”. Moreover, some participants were given scrambled sentences which contained words associated with creativity, like original, novel, or invention, while others had sentences which did not contain such words. This type of manipulation has been shown in previous studies to lead people to think more creatively.
Following the creativity prime, participants were asked to roll a die out of view of the experimenter. They were told that for their payment, they would earn, in dollars, whatever number they reported the die was. For example, if the die showed a three, they would earn three dollars. This measure provides a clever gauge of cheating, as the average of a number of die rolls should be 3.5. Averages much different from that would mean, in this context, that people were lying about what number showed up in order to receive a bigger payment.
In addition, the researchers had guessed that creativity would lead to unethical behavior because it enabled people to more easily come up with justifications for their actions. Research has previously shown that whenever people do something which might be perceived as bad, they tend to reduce the ‘badness’ of this behavior by finding some justification for their corrupt behavior. As an example, if you find yourself being less than honest on your taxes, you may justify this by telling yourself that this is something everyone does, or that it doesn’t really hurt anyone.
So, if creativity leads to dishonesty primarily by assisting in coming up with justifications for dishonest behavior a creative mindset should not influence people’s likelihood of cheating if they already have some justification in mind. To test this idea, the researchers provided ‘justifications’ for some participants by allowing them to roll the die multiple times, but telling them that only the first roll counted. It turns out that one way of increasing the ease with which people can come up with justifications is by allowing them to observe something which almost happened, but didn’t. In this case, rolling a six on the second roll after rolling a lower number on the first, critical roll should give people a leg up on justifying their dishonest behavior.
It was found that when asked to roll the die once, people not primed with creativity were relatively honest. Individuals primed with creativity, on the other hand, behaved much more dishonestly, reporting much higher die rolls on average. Further, this effect disappeared when people rolled the die multiple times. That is, when people were provided with help to think up justifications, creativity had no effect on cheating. This pattern of results seems to confirm that creativity helps people to think up justifications for dishonest behavior.
These studies demonstrate that there is indeed a dark side to creativity. Perhaps, given this information, it should come as no surprise that the best and brightest in many fields are frequently caught in all manner of immoral transgressions. Steve Jobs was an iconic and creative CEO, but he was also a human, and subject to the same principles of behavior as anyone else, including these downsides to his explosive creativity. In the case of the heads of financial firms and their exploitation of mortgage-backed securities, the tendency to hire creative individuals and promote creativity within organizations may be good for business, even as it is remarkably bad for the rest of us.
See what we're tweeting about
17 Comments
Add CommentI'm sorry but does it really take a study to realise that if you're going to weave a tangled web, ie. lie and get away with it, you're going to have to be pretty damned imaginative? The notion that this works the other way round and that lying makes you imaginative is just plain daft! People do not continue with behaviour that does not reward them so lying without imagination (and therefore being caught out) will quickly reduce or even eliminate it. There is every reason to believe that "I cannot tell a lie!" is not a moral decision but a mere statement of fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is one of the most convoluted explanations of a tautology that I have ever seen. What is creativity except "thinking/behaving outside the box"?? And What is immorality except "thinking/behaving outside the box"? There is a VERY small difference here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe it is the objective that causes the cheating, not the creativity. Goal oriented people might get more practice being creative, and being focused on objectives cannot be focused on empathy. Even the objective to optimize everyone's life can be blind to its trespasses. Try the experiment with no reason to cheat (prestige, money).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom personal experience, I think creative people feel that they comprehend the rules so well, that they can flout them without adverse effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExample: Crossing the street even if there is a red light, when there are no cars coming. Clever people feel that their understanding of rules is so good, they need not follow them if they feel their is a better way.
i.e. Creative people think they are not sheeple, which is true.
Your arrogance is adorable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can tell you honestly, that as a creative person who earns a living from advertising, the idea of creativity and dishonestly as a link is untrue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Intellectual giants are moral pygmies" is an old well known saying .Any amount of modern research would only confirm old wisdom and not contradict it in any way.Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince I did not see any numbers about how much dishonesty was increased, my guess is that it was very little. Even periodicals catering to the general public manage put in numbers like 10% increase without any difficulty, so why does S.A., which is supposedly catering to the science-minded, have trouble doing so? I think the scientists are trying to exaggerate the importance of their results rather than trying to communicate with the public, which is pretty disappointing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had similar thoughts to DonPaul as I read this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the "thinking outside the box" thing could be an alternate explanation: not so much creative thinking increasing justification of immoral actions, as loosening of constraints on thinking bring about both. (I would still expect some justification to be going on, but after the fact.)
Another thought: where was the study done? Here in the US people are often encouraged to "think outside the box" to be creative, or to not "let people tell you what you can't do", the idea being that artificial or cultural restraints stifle creativity and/or accomplishment. I would suggest repeating this experiment on people not exposed to such ideas/culture to see if the creativity/immorality correlation is culturally-based.
Ok, Hitler was a painter, but Stalin and Mao only practiced in the art of killing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFlaws abound in the article and the presumptions on which it is based.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmong other things, it can be argued that there is a definitive difference between originality, imaginativeness and creativity.
And note the sea change in the article, starting off talking about immorality, then diverting into criminality. You start out thinking it's going to talk about great artists and foregoing social mores, then it turns into heads of multi million dollar corporations, most of whose corporate "creativity" comes from their employees and clandestine arrangements with other corporations, and the filthy dealings that characterize those clandestine arrangements.
Among other things, Steve Jobs was no creative genius. If he was so capable, why was Apple buying NeXT and not NeXT buying Apple? Throughout his career, he was known only for gimmickry and self promotion. He made nothing new, he designed nothing new. Being the head of a company that produces a thin cell phone is not necessarily a leap of personal quality.
And consider something crucial. How did the "studies" "analyze" this purported connection between creativity and criminal inclination? By looking at those societally declared "creative", and those are the ones who got famous! They didn't have some people draw pictures, decide which ones were the most imaginative, then watch to see if they stole the wallet of the person next to them! For the majority of individuals who couldn't be imaginative on their best day, becoming famous, popular and rich automatically equates with "creative", so, basically, they were just looking for those who got rich! So you have someone who slept their way to wealth; who stole someone else's ideas; who engaged in ruthless self-promotion, promising to give others a free ride on their coattails, as long as those others didn't admit they were a fraud! Basically, a tautology, they looked at those whose so called "creativity", at least in today's market, masks unethicality and criminality, and then prove that they engaged in unethicality and criminality.
Sweeping generalization! In any case I wish these writers would define their words more carefully. This one seems to have most interested in neo-Ricardian business types. I wouldn't call them "creative"--just bullying and unethical. Maybe sociopathic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArtists are creative--writers, painters, composers, etc. They seem to range all over the place in eccentricity and whether or not they prefer to be respectable. You couldn't call uxorious Bach, Mendelssohn, or the Wyeths unethical, immoral, disreputable or eccentric--but Gauguin and Wagner could represent the opposite end of the artistic personality.
OK. Travis Riddle is a creative person demonstrated by his research reports. Therefore he is an immoral, unethical, and/or criminal person. He should be reported to the appropriate religious/philosophical authority, the president, dean, and ethics department at Columbia University, and/or the NYPD.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study is internally inconsistent and purports to test "honesty" when, in fact, it merely demonstrates the normal result of researchers unilaterally breaking an implicit contract with subjects who then retaliate:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. The researchers ask the subjects to perform, implicitly, to the best of their focused ability in executing a task involving creativity;
2. the subjects are then "rewarded" for their focused efforts by being given a randomly chosen -- meaning arbitrary, _unfocused_, and demeaning -- acknowledgement of their merit (which amount the subject then reports to the researchers and so on).
The "honesty" tested in this study appears to be a straw man when in fact, it is the researchers' ingenuous contract that subjects primed for creativity retaliate against. Subjects might be assessing a mere surcharge for the aggravation they've been subjected to here.
Of course, the academic researchers themselves were focused on testing for dishonesty in those slimy and suspect creative types and -- surprise, surprise -- that's what they found.
This article begs the question; are non-creative people more or less immoral than creative people? As a creative person I feel that I'm very moral-minded, my political persuasion is left wing, small-L liberal. I'm a very lateral thinker, I make connections, I see patterns of cause and effect, the amoral actions of much of our political leadership for example appalls me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, it seems to me that there are different kinds of creativity and that it comes as an aspect of moral type, if your moral type is bad then you're likely to put your creativity to work for it, not the other way around; creativity doesn't necessarily engender amoral behaviour.
Since we are not more than " our brains that work purely physicaly" if we have a supper electric brain that to say creative, then it makes the rules but not let any one else do for him the rules.I am convinced that creativity is not to obay all the rules like a flock.Our culture call this dishonesty, or cheating, but in some occasions it is a good quality of brain to make the good interpretations for every cercumstanc as long as it is not causing harm to any one else but a to benifet the person and to the society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting article, though I don't fully agree with it. Let's be creative and apply the "inversion technique": how about renaming it as "unethical people tends to be more creative". It would match the content of the article as well, isn't it? It may turn out that dishonest people do have brain function altered and that's the reason why they are also specially gifted for creative tasks. You don't have to agree with my reflection, but let's be critic enough to keep the conclusions of this article in quarantine too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this