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Researchers across disciplines have become increasingly interested in understanding why even people
who care about morality predictably cross ethical boundaries. This heightened interest in unethical
behavior, defined as acts that violate widely held moral rules or norms of appropriate conduct
(Treviño, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006), is easily understood. Unethical behavior creates trillions of
dollars in financial losses every year and is becoming increasingly commonplace
(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2011).

One form of unethical behavior, dishonesty, seems especially pervasive (Bazerman & Gino, 2012).
Like other forms of unethical behavior, dishonesty involves breaking a rule—the social principle
that people should tell the truth. Much of the scholarly attention devoted to understanding why
individuals behave unethically has therefore focused on the factors that lead people to break
rules.

Although rule breaking carries a negative connotation in the domain of ethics, it carries a
positive connotation in another well-researched domain: creativity. To be creative, it is often
said, one must “think outside the box” and use divergent thinking (Guilford, 1967; Runco, 2010;
Simonton, 1999). Divergent thinking requires that people break some (but not all) rules within a
domain to construct associations between previously unassociated cognitive elements (Bailin, 1987;
Guilford, 1950). The resulting unusual mental associations serve as the basis for novel ideas
(Langley & Jones, 1988; Sternberg, 1988). The creative process therefore involves rule breaking, as
one must break rules to take advantage of existing opportunities or to create new ones (Brenkert,
2009). Thus, scholars have asserted that organizations may foster creativity by hiring people slow
to learn the organizational code (Sutton, 2001, 2002) and by encouraging people to break from
accepted practices (Winslow & Solomon, 1993) or to break rules (Baucus, Norton, Baucus, & Human,
2008; Kelley & Littman, 2001).

Given that both dishonesty and creativity involve rule breaking, the individuals most likely to
behave dishonestly and the individuals most likely to be creative may be one and the same. Indeed,
highly creative people are more likely than less creative people to bend rules or break laws
(Cropley, Kaufman, & Cropley, 2003; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995; Sulloway, 1996). Popular tales are
replete with images of “evil geniuses,” such as Rotwang in Metropolis and “Lex” Luthor in Superman,
who are both creative and nefarious in their attempts to ruin humanity. Similarly, news articles
have applied the “evil genius” moniker to Bernard Madoff, who made $20 billion disappear using a
creative Ponzi scheme.

The causal relationship between creativity and unethical behavior may take two possible forms: The
creative process may trigger dishonesty; alternatively, acting unethically may enhance creativity.
Research has demonstrated that enhancing the motivation to think outside the box can drive people
toward more dishonest decisions (Beaussart, Andrews, & Kaufman, 2013; Gino & Ariely, 2012). But
could acting dishonestly enhance creativity in subsequent tasks?

In five experiments, we obtained the first empirical evidence that behaving dishonestly can spur
creativity and examined the psychological mechanism explaining this link. We suggest that after
behaving dishonestly, people feel less constrained by rules, and are thus more likely to act
creatively by constructing associations between previously unassociated cognitive elements.


General Discussion

There is little doubt that dishonesty creates costs for society. It is less clear whether it
produces any positive consequences. This research identified one such positive consequence,
demonstrating that people may become more creative after behaving dishonestly because acting
dishonestly leaves them feeling less constrained by rules.

By identifying potential consequences of acting dishonestly, these findings complement existing
research on behavioral ethics and moral psychology, which has focused primarily on identifying the
antecedents to unethical behavior (Bazerman & Gino, 2012). These findings also advance
understanding of creative behavior by showing that feeling unconstrained by rules enhances creative
sparks. More speculatively, our research raises the possibility that one of the reasons why
dishonesty is so widespread in today’s society is that by acting dishonestly, people become more
creative, which allows them to come up with more creative justifications for their immoral behavior
and therefore makes them more likely to behave dishonestly (Gino & Ariely, 2012), which may make
them more creative, and so on.

In sum, this research shows that the sentiment expressed in the common saying “rules are meant to
be broken” is at the root of both creative performance and dishonest behavior. It also provides new
evidence that dishonesty may therefore lead people to become more creative in their subsequent
endeavors.


Úkol č.2

A)        Cropley, D. H., Kaufman, J. C.  &  A. J. Cropley (2003) Malevolent creativity: A
functional model of creativity in terrorism and crime. Creativity Research Journal, 20, 105–11

Citace z cýzkumu: Given that both dishonesty and creativity involve rule breaking, the individuals
most likely to behave dishonestly and the individuals most likely to be creative may be one and the
same. Indeed, highly creative people are more likely than less creative people to bend rules or
break laws

Úryvek z původního textu: Criminality may sometimes be a kind of accidental by-product of
creativity: Because creativity requires deviating from the conventional, there is a permanent
tension between being creative and producing products that go too far, sometimes to the point of
breaking the law (whether or not other societies or later generations would approve of the law in
question)

A second kind of link between creativity and crime is seen when creative individuals break the law,
not as part of their creativity or as a direct result of their kreativity but, so to speak, on the
side. A creative individual who committed a murder or robbed a bank would be an obvious example.
The fact that the murderer was highly creative might help him or her to plan and carry out the
crime in a novel way, but by and large the fact that the murderer was creative would be
coincidental.

B)        CROPLEY, Arthur a David CROPLEY. The dark side of creativity. Creativity and Crime.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, s. 116.

Citace z cýzkumu: The dark side of creativity can be refuted in several ways. The most fundamental
argument is that it is parsimonious and therefore scientifically tenable to look at the creative
process and at creative capacity (and potential) rather than at eventual creative products. The
products are the results of the process and so more like symptoms (an appropriate word for
malevolent creativity) than casual factors. Second is that the creative process is blind and only
supplies original options and ideas. There are often deviant, but only in tense of being unusual
and unconventional, not in any immoral or unethical manner. The morality or the options can be
determined (and an influence, for that matter) only after ideas are produces, that is, after the
generative process that is the engine for creative work.

Úryvek z původního textu: Given that both dishonesty and creativity involve rule breaking, the
individuals most likely to behave dishonestly and the individuals most likely to be creative may be
one and the same. Indeed, highly creative people are more likely than less creative people to bend
rules or break laws.


C)        Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., & Fong, G. T. (2005). Establishing a causal chain: Why
experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological
processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845–851

Citace z cýzkumu: “In Experiment 4, we tested whether caring about rules explained the relationship
between dishonesty and creativity using a traditional mediation approach. In Experiment 5, we
obtained further evidence for this mediating mechanism using a moderation approach”

Úryvek z původního textu:

If a psychological process can be easily manipulated but is difficult to measure, then we recommend
a design that examines this psychological process by manipulating the process to moderate the
relation between the independent variable and the dependent variable—what we call a
moderation-of-process design. Such designs (e.g., when cognitive load interferes with controlled
processing of information) can provide compelling evidence of a proposed psychological process when
there is compelling evidence that the operational manipulation of the process does indeed have the
proposed theoretical effect and when alternative explanations for the effect of the manipulation on
the relation between the independent and dependent variable have been ruled out.


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