Creativity and dishonesty:the ability to justify unethical behavior

Te present study aimed to investigate an undesirable and harmful aspect of creativity. It was hypothesized that creative people have the ability to find creative ways for justifying their unethical behaviors, and thus they can better convince themselves to commit immoral behaviors. One hundred and sixty five undergraduates (66 males, 99 females) were selected using multistage random sampling. The participants completed the Abedi Creavity Test (2003) and the Raven`s Progressive Matrices (1995). The participants were exposed to an ethical dilemma in two ways: justifying unethical behavior (dishonesty) was easy in justifiable group and was difficult in unjustifiable group. Consistent with research hypothesis, the results of moderated regression analysis indicated that creativity predicted dishonesty even after controlling for intelligence and this prediction is stronger in the unjustifiable group than the justifiable group. The findings suggested that creativity had negative aspects besides positive aspects.