{"id":24506,"date":"2011-12-20T16:53:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T16:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/are-creative-people-more-dishonest-carmen-nobel\/"},"modified":"2011-12-20T16:53:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T16:53:10","slug":"are-creative-people-more-dishonest-carmen-nobel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/are-creative-people-more-dishonest-carmen-nobel\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Creative People More Dishonest? – Carmen Nobel via HBS Working Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are Creative People More Dishonest? – Carmen Nobel via HBS Working Knowledge<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Picasso is attributed with saying “art is a lie that tells the truth”. Creative individuals have also been characterized as those who can hold two conflicting ideas in their mind without going insane. This study comes as no surprise, but as verification<\/p>\n

stoweboyd<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Steve Jobs was theorethically channeling Picasso when he said \u2018Good artists borrow, great artists steal,\u2019 but he may have been onto something. It turns out that creatives are more likely to cheat, according to new research by Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Francesca Gino<\/p>\n

\n

Carmen Nobel via HBS Working Knowledge<\/a><\/p>\n

Is there a link between creativity and unethical behavior?<\/p>\n

There certainly is, according to an article in a forthcoming issue of the\u00a0Journal of Personality and Social Psychology<\/em>. In \u201cThe Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest,\u201d the authors report that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative types. Furthermore, they show that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sobering thought in a corporate culture that champions out-of-the-box thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any organization, especially in contexts that are global and very competitive, there is so much focus on trying to be innovative and creative,\u201d says Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, who wrote the article with Dan Ariely of Duke University. \u201cBut is creativity always good? We often hear of cases in which people use innovative behavior to create a sense that what they\u2019re doing is not morally wrong. So, Dan and I started wondering whether there is something about the creative process that triggers dishonest behavior. Specifically, we decided to explore the idea that enhancing the motivation to think outside the box can drive individuals toward more dishonest decisions when facing ethical dilemmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Overall, the researchers learned, the higher the creativity required for the job, the higher the level of self-reported dishonesty.<\/p>\n

Then, through a series of experimental studies, the researchers tested\u2014and largely proved\u2014the theory that creative people are more likely to exhibit unethical behavior when faced with ethical dilemmas.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were simple studies, but they were powerful in showing that our ability to justify things is significantly greater if we are in a creative mindset or when we are creative people,\u201d Gino says.<\/p>\n

That said, Gino is quick to add that she and Ariely are not suggesting that companies put the kibosh on innovation in order to keep dishonesty at bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not saying that creativity is bad,\u201d Gino says. \u201cBut we are saying that it can lead to problems. And so the question from a manager\u2019s perspective is: How do you get the good outcomes of creativity without triggering the bad outcomes?\u201d<\/p>\n

While \u201cThe Dark Side of Creativity\u201d doesn\u2019t answer that question directly, Gino hopes that the research will remind innovative organizations not to give short shrift to ethics.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a manager, if you\u2019re highlighting the importance of being creative and innovative, it\u2019s important to make sure that you\u2019re stressing the presence of ethics, too,\u201d Gino says. \u201cDan and I are of the hope that managers will start thinking about how to structure the creative process in such a way that they can keep ethics in check, triggering the good behavior without triggering the bad behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps the creatives\u2019 world view involves a relaxation of the \u2018principles\u2019 that constrain people with other perspectives? What is they are inseparable?\u00a0I don\u2019t think you can chase away the devils of creativity without losing the angels, as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are Creative People More Dishonest? – Carmen Nobel via HBS Working Knowledge Picasso is attributed with saying “art is a lie that tells the truth”. Creative individuals have also been characterized as those who can hold two conflicting ideas in their mind without going insane. This study comes as no surprise, but as verification stoweboyd: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-6ng","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}