Creative people more likely to cheat: Study

Updated on: Wednesday, November 30, 2011

It seems creativity doesn't always go with integrity, as a new Harvard University study has found that people who are more creative are more likely to cheat others in financial matters.

The research found that when it comes to money, creative people are more likely to cheat to get it than their less-imaginative counterparts.

They may be more skilled at coming up with reasons for their less-than-ethical actions, the researcher said.

"Greater creativity helps inpiduals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead inpiduals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks," Francesca Gino, who led the study, was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

In the new study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the researchers measured the creativity and intelligence of 97 university students by asking them to complete a series of recognised psychological tests.

The participants then subjected to several experiments to determine whether the creative types are more likely to cheat under circumstances where they can justify their dishonesty.

In one experiment, participants looked at drawings with dots on two sides of a diagonal line and had to figure out which side had more dots. However, in half of the 200 trials, it was virtually impossible to tell by looking if one side of the drawing contained more dots than the other.

The participants were told that they would be paid 10 times as much for each "right side" decision as for a "left side" decision. It was found that those who had scored highest on creativity on the psychological tests were significantly more likely to give the answer that paid more, despite how ambiguous it was.

In another experiment, they completed a general-knowledge quiz and were asked to transfer their answers onto a standard "item-response" test sheet. They were also told that the wrong sheet and the correct answers were lightly marked.

The researcher also made them to believe that they can cheat while transferring the sheets and get more money for correct answers. And again, it was found the more creative ones were significantly more likely to cheat than those who were less creative.

Although the researchers found a link between creativity and dishonesty, they did not find a link between intelligence and dishonesty. For example, the experiments showed that intelligent-but-less-creative people were no more inclined toward dishonesty than less-intelligent and less-creative participants.

The study, the researchers said, suggests that "being able to generate several original justifications for one's own unethical actions thanks to creativity may lead people to feel licensed to cheat".

As such, the findings have practical implications, they argued. "The results from the current paper indicate that, in fact, people who are creative or work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas," they wrote.

The researchers noted that they created situations in which participants were tempted by money to cheat, and that further research is needed to investigate whether creativity leads people to satisfy selfish goals in real life.

Creative people more likely to cheat: Study

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