PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Dishonesty and creativity: 2 sides of the same coin?

2014-02-20
(Press-News.org) New research shows that lying about performance on one task may increase creativity on a subsequent task by making people feel less bound by conventional rules.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"The common saying that 'rules are meant to be broken' is at the root of both creative performance and dishonest behavior," says lead researcher Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School. "Both creativity and dishonesty, in fact, involve rule breaking."

To examine the link between dishonesty and creativity, Gino and colleague Scott Wiltermuth of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California designed a series of experiments that allowed, and even sometimes encouraged, people to cheat.

In the first experiment, for example, participants were presented with a series of number matrices and were tasked with finding two numbers that added up to 10 in each matrix. They were told they would be compensated based on the number of matrices they had been able to solve and were asked to self-report the number they got correct. This setup allowed participants to inflate their own performance — what they didn't know was that the researchers were able to track their actual performance.

In a subsequent and supposedly unrelated task, the participants were presented with sets of three words (e.g., sore, shoulder, sweat) and were asked to come up with a fourth word (e.g., cold) that was related to each word in the set. The task, which taps a person's ability to identify words that are so-called "remote associates," is commonly used to measure creative thinking.

Gino and Wiltermuth found that almost 59% of the participants cheated by inflating their performance on the matrices in the experiment.

And cheating on the matrices seemed to be associated with a boost to creative thinking — cheaters figured out more of the remote associates than those who didn't cheat.

Subsequent experiments provided further evidence for a link between dishonesty and creativity, revealing that participants showed higher levels of creative thinking according to various measures after they had been induced to cheat on an earlier task.

Additional data suggest that cheating may encourage subsequent creativity by priming participants to be less constrained by rules.

Previous work has focused on the factors that might lead to unethical behavior. In earlier research, Gino had found that encouraging out-of-the-box thinking can lead people toward more dishonest decisions when confronted with an ethical dilemma.

This research, however, focuses on the consequences of dishonesty:

"We turned the relationship upside down, in a sense," says Gino. "Our research raises the possibility that one of the reasons why dishonesty seems so widespread in today's society is that by acting dishonestly we become more creative — and this creativity may allow us to come up with original justifications for our immoral behavior and make us likely to keep crossing ethical boundaries."

Gino and Wiltermuth are following up on these findings by investigating how people respond when dishonesty and creativity are combined in the form of "creative" cheating. Their initial findings suggest that people may give cheaters a pass if they cheat in particularly creative ways.

INFORMATION:

For more information about this study, please contact: Francesca Gino at fgino@hbs.edu.

The article abstract can be found online: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/18/0956797614520714.abstract

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Hypnosis therapy shown to decrease fatigue levels in breast cancer patients

2014-02-20
Breast cancer patients receiving radiotherapy showed decreased fatigue as a result of cognitive behavioral therapy plus hypnosis (CBTH), according to a study recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study, titled, "Randomized Controlled Trial of a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Plus Hypnosis Intervention to Control Fatigue in Patients Undergoing Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer," was led by Guy Montgomery, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program in the Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine ...

Malaria maps reveal that 184 million Africans still live in extremely high-risk areas despite decade of control efforts

Malaria maps reveal that 184 million Africans still live in extremely high-risk areas despite decade of control efforts
2014-02-20
Forty African countries showed reductions in malaria transmission between 2000-2010, but despite this progress, more than half (57 per cent) of the population in countries endemic for malaria continue to live in areas of moderate to intense transmission, with infection rates over 10 per cent. The findings are based on a series of prevalence maps for malaria published this week in the Lancet. A team led by Dr Abdisalan Noor and Professor Robert Snow of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme produced the maps by geocoding data from surveys in 44 African countries and ...

Food packaging chemicals may be harmful to human health over long term

2014-02-20
The synthetic chemicals used in the packaging, storage, and processing of foodstuffs might be harmful to human health over the long term, warn environmental scientists in a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. This is because most of these substances are not inert and can leach into the foods we eat, they say. Despite the fact that some of these chemicals are regulated, people who eat packaged or processed foods are likely to be chronically exposed to low levels of these substances throughout their lives, say the authors. And far too little ...

Public defibrillator shortage helping to boost heart attack deaths away from hospital

2014-02-20
The restricted availability of defibrillators, and poor understanding of how to use them, are helping to boost the number of deaths from heart attacks occurring outside hospitals, suggests a study of one English county, published online in the journal Heart. This is despite several campaigns to increase the numbers of these life-saving devices in public places, and the acknowledgement of the importance of their role in the English government's Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy, published last March, say the authors. Every minute of delay in administering resuscitation ...

Study of jazz players shows common brain circuitry processes music and language

2014-02-20
The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics — those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers. The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of "trading ...

Study finds nothing so sweet as a voice like your own

2014-02-20
Have you ever noticed that your best friends speak the same way? A new University of British Columbia study finds we prefer voices that are similar to our own because they convey a soothing sense of community and social belongingness. While previous research has suggested that we prefer voices that sound like they are coming from smaller women or bigger men, the new study – published today in the journal PLOS ONE – identifies a variety of other acoustic signals that we find appealing. [NB: Article available at: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088616] "The ...

NIH team discovers genetic disorder causing strokes and vascular inflammation in children

2014-02-20
National Institutes of Health researchers have identified gene variants that cause a rare syndrome of sporadic fevers, skin rashes and recurring strokes, beginning early in childhood. The team's discovery coincides with findings by an Israeli research group that identified an overlapping set of variants of the same gene in patients with a similar type of blood vessel inflammation. The NIH group first encountered a patient with the syndrome approximately 10 years ago. The patient, then 3 years old, experienced fevers, skin rash and strokes that left her severely disabled. ...

Two-thirds of women not taking folic acid before pregnancy to prevent spina bifida

2014-02-20
Research published today from Queen Mary University of London reveals less than 1 in 3 women have taken folic acid supplements before pregnancy to prevent spina bifida and other birth defects of the brain, spine, or spinal cord (neural tube defects). This is despite research from 1991 showing that such conditions could be prevented in most cases by increasing the intake of the B-vitamin folic acid before pregnancy. The study, carried out by Queen Mary's Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and published in the journal PLOS ONE, questioned nearly half a million women ...

Iron deficiency may increase stroke risk through sticky blood

2014-02-20
Scientists at Imperial College London have discovered that iron deficiency may increase stroke risk by making the blood more sticky. The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, could ultimately help with stroke prevention. Every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. Nearly six million die and another five million are left permanently disabled. The most common type, ischaemic stroke, occurs because the blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots. In the last few years, several studies have shown that iron deficiency, which affects around ...

Ants build raft to escape flood, protect queen

Ants build raft to escape flood, protect queen
2014-02-20
When facing a flood, ants build rafts and use both the buoyancy of the brood and the recovery ability of workers to minimize injury or death, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 19, 2014 by Jessica Purcell from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. Furthermore, the queen ant is placed in the middle and protected on all sides by the rafting ants. When put in harm's way, social animals are often able to work together to enhance the survival and welfare of the group. Ants living on flood plains are known to link to together to create rafts ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Premenstrual symptoms linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease

Newly discovered remains of ancient river landscapes control ice flow in East Antarctica

Newly discovered interstellar object 'may be oldest comet ever seen'

Animal-inspired AI robot learns to navigate unfamiliar terrain

Underserved youth less likely to visit emergency department for concussion in Ontario, study finds

‘Molecular shield’ placed in the nose may soon treat common hay fever trigger

Beetles under climate stress lay larger male eggs: Wolbachia infection drives adaptive reproduction strategy in response to rising temperature and CO₂

Groundbreaking quantum study puts wave-particle duality to work

Weekly injection could be life changing for Parkinson’s patients

Toxic metals linked to impaired growth in infants in Guatemala

Being consistently physically active in adulthood linked to 30–40% lower risk of death

Nerve pain drug gabapentin linked to increased dementia, cognitive impairment risks

Children’s social care involvement common to nearly third of UK mums who died during perinatal period

‘Support, not judgement’: Study explores links between children’s social care involvement and maternal deaths

Ethnic minority and poorer children more likely to die in intensive care

Major progress in fertility preservation after treatment for cancer of the lymphatic system

Fewer complications after additional ultrasound in pregnant women who feel less fetal movement

Environmental impact of common pesticides seriously underestimated

The Milky Way could be teeming with more satellite galaxies than previously thought

New study reveals surprising reproductive secrets of a cricket-hunting parasitoid fly

Media Tip Sheet: Symposia at ESA2025

NSF CAREER Award will power UVA engineer’s research to improve drug purification

Tiny parasitoid flies show how early-life competition shapes adult success

New coating for glass promises energy-saving windows

Green spaces boost children’s cognitive skills and strengthen family well-being

Ancient trees dying faster than expected in Eastern Oregon

Study findings help hone precision of proven CVD risk tool

Most patients with advanced melanoma who received pre-surgical immunotherapy remain alive and disease free four years later

Introducing BioEmu: A generative AI Model that enables high-speed and accurate prediction of protein structural ensembles

Replacing mutated microglia with healthy microglia halts progression of genetic neurological disease in mice and humans

[Press-News.org] Dishonesty and creativity: 2 sides of the same coin?