1Harvard Business School, Harvard University.
Psychol Sci. 2014 Apr;25(4):973-81. doi: 10.1177/0956797614520714. Epub 2014 Feb 18.
We propose that dishonest and creative behavior have something in common: They both involve breaking rules. Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty (as shown in prior work), and dishonesty may lead to creativity (the hypothesis we tested in this research). In five experiments, participants had the opportunity to behave dishonestly by overreporting their performance on various tasks. They then completed one or more tasks designed to measure creativity. Those who cheated were subsequently more creative than noncheaters, even when we accounted for individual differences in their creative ability (Experiment 1). Using random assignment, we confirmed that acting dishonestly leads to greater creativity in subsequent tasks (Experiments 2 and 3). The link between dishonesty and creativity is explained by a heightened feeling of being unconstrained by rules, as indicated by both mediation (Experiment 4) and moderation (Experiment 5).
我们提出，不诚实和创造性的行为有一些共同之处：它们都涉及到打破规则。由于这一共同特征，创造力可能导致不诚实（如先前的研究所示），而不诚实也可能导致创造力（这是我们在这项研究中测试的假设）。在五项实验中，参与者有机会通过夸大自己在各种任务上的表现来不诚实地行事。然后，他们完成了一项或多项旨在衡量创造力的任务。那些作弊的人比不诚实的人更有创造力，即使我们考虑到他们创造力的个体差异（实验 1）。通过随机分配，我们证实不诚实地行为会导致后续任务中更高的创造力（实验 2 和实验 3）。不诚实和创造力之间的联系可以通过更高的感觉来解释，即不受规则的限制，这一点既通过中介（实验 4）也通过调节（实验 5）得到了证实。
