The Dark Side of Creativity: Creativity and Dishonesty

Do you think highly creative people are less likely to be honest than less creative people?

Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business wrote a working paper titled The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest.

The researchers found that highly creative students were less honest than less creative students. They summarized their findings as follows:

"Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals' motivation to think outside the box and that this increased motivation leads to unethical behavior.

In four studies, we show:

Participants with creative personalities who scored high on a test of divergent thinking tended to cheat more.

Dispositional creativity was a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence.

Participants primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly because of their creativity motivation.

Participants were also more likely to behave dishonestly because they had a greater ability to justify their behavior.

Finally, a field study constructively replicated these effects and demonstrated that individuals who work in more creative positions are also more morally flexible.

The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity."

Do you consider yourself a highly creative person? Everyone is creative to some extent. If so, do you also consider yourself more dishonest than people you consider less creative? Difficult to swallow?

Has denial moved in to protect your creative mind? Are you using that creative mind to justify what you do, just as these authors suggest people may have a tendency to do?

What can a highly creative person do about this? Stay alert to the possibility and take extra care to be honest.

I intend to continue being as creative as I can be and stay as honest and ethical as I can.

So can you, I guess. Just don't give in to the dark side.

Put it into Practice

Try the "Creative Alibi" Challenge. Put your creative thinking to work on a questionable decision, then see whether your creativity helps you solve the ethical problem or simply helps you justify what you want to do.

1	Pick a gray area. Think of a real situation where you could bend a rule, leave out information, take credit, or make an exception for yourself.
2	Make your case. Spend two minutes using your most creative thinking to justify the questionable choice. Write down every convincing reason you can find.
3	Call your bluff. Circle the reasons that are actually excuses, rationalizations, or ways of avoiding responsibility. Notice how easily a clever explanation can make a questionable choice feel acceptable.
4	Reverse the creativity. Use your creativity to generate reasons for making the ethical choice instead. Come up with at least five possibilities.
5	Change the perspective. Imagine the decision became public or was made by someone you respect. Would you judge it differently? Write down what changes.
6	Set an honesty trigger. Choose one question to ask yourself whenever you face a tempting gray area: "Am I solving the problem, or am I using my creativity to justify what I want?"

The challenge: Use creativity to challenge your own rationalizations, not just to make them more convincing. Stay alert to the possibility that being good at thinking outside the box can also make it easier to explain away crossing a line. •

Edward Glassman, PhD, was President of Creativity College® and Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he led the Program for Team Effectiveness and Creativity. …

The Dark Side of Creativity: Are Original Thinkers More Dishonest?