Are Creative People More Apt to Deceive?A new research study suggests creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people because their talent allows them to rationalize the action.

“Greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks,” said lead researcher Francesca Gino, Ph.D., of Harvard University.

Gino and co-author Dan Ariely, Ph.D., of Duke University, developed a series of five experiments to test if more creative people would cheat under circumstances where they could justify their bad behavior. Their research is found online in the American Psychological Association’s online Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In the study, researchers used a series of recognized psychological tests and measures to gauge research subjects’ creativity. They also tested participants’ intelligence.




Interestingly, researchers discovered the more creative participants were significantly more likely to cheat. However, there was no link between intelligence and dishonesty – i.e., more intelligent but less creative people were not more inclined toward dishonesty.

In another experiment, test subjects were shown drawings with dots on two sides of a diagonal line and asked to indicate whether there were more dots on the left side or right side.

In half of 200 trials, it was virtually impossible to tell whether there were more dots on one side or another. However, participants were told they’d be paid 10 times as much (5 cents vs. 0.5 cents) for each time they said there were more dots on the right side.




An important limitation of the study was the use of monetary incentives to encourage cheating. To remove the monetary component, researchers suggest future investigations should explore whether creativity would lead people to satisfy selfish, short-term goals, rather than their higher aspirations. For example, do creative people have more or less discipline to refrain from eating a slice of cake when trying to lose weight?

Source: American Psychological Association

man taking test photo by shutterstock.