February 20, 2014

Dishonesty and Creativity: Two Sides of the Same Coin?



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.”