How does creativity influence dishonest behavior? An empirical study of Chinese students

ABSTRACT

This research aims to clarify the relationship between creativity and dishonesty. Study 1 (N = 74) examined whether creativity primed by the scrambled sentence test could influence dishonesty. The results showed that primed individuals were less likely to act dishonestly. Study 2 (N = 134) investigated the association between creative style and spontaneous (using a visual perception task) and instructed dishonesty (differentiation-of-deception paradigm). Rule-followers more often implemented spontaneous dishonest behavior but showed low accuracy in instructed lying tasks. The findings expand our understanding of the correlation between creativity and unethical behavior, which may improve moral creative talents.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity
• spontaneous dishonesty
• instructed dishonesty
• dishonest behavior

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ETHICAL STATEMENT

The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The present research was supported by The Key Project of the Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. 20SHA004).