Everything casts a shadow. Not only have creativity and innovation produced useful things such as the vaccines for deadly diseases, inspiring masterworks of art, and non-stick cookware, they have also lead to advances in organized crime, the predatory structuring of credit card payments, and the proliferation of handguns.
Disturbed by the stories of creative scams such as Bernie Madoff’s now infamous yet highly creative ponzi scheme they were reading in the press, a team of scientists set out to explore the ways in which creativity leads to less than scrupulous behavior. According to their study, release in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, creative thinking and innovation isn’t always for the greatest good.
Great scam artists are often described as “creative.” Jeffrey Skilling was a virtuoso of “creative accounting.” Bernie Madoff pulled off a “creative reinvention” of the old Ponzi scheme. And Charles Ponzi himself was a “creative promoter” and a “creative and ambitious businessman.” Just last week, we met Mike Daisey, king of “creative license.” Coincidence?
Perhaps not.
A recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology makes the claim that creativity walks hand in hand with loose ethics. Francesca Gino of Harvard University and Dan Ariely of Duke University conducted a series of experiments in which they asked subjects to complete various ethically ambiguous tasks. The result: Not only do naturally creative people cheat more than uncreative people, subjects cajoled into thinking outside of the box become cheaters, too. This suggests that the creative process isn’t just tied to dishonest behavior; it actually enables it–troubling news at a time when the corporate world treats innovation as an unimpeachable moral good.
For the full article and for tips on insuring that your own creativity head in the wrong direction, see “Uh-Oh, Science Says Creativity and Dishonesty Go Hand in Hand.”