Research On The Relationship Between Creativity And Moral Behavior

In previous studies,the relationship between creativity and moral behavior has been very inconsistent.Empirical studies have shown that the more creative individuals are,the more they can come up with different excuses for the consequences of their behaviors,and the more likely they are to commit unethical behavior;Some studies have found the opposite,that the more creative an individual is,the more likely he or she is to come up with adequate solutions to a problem,so as to reduce unethical behavior and promote ethical behavior;Other researchers,of course,argue that creativity and morality are completely unrelated concepts,and the two are not intrinsically related.Does creativity have moral properties? What is the relationship between creativity and moral behavior,and what role does moral imagination play in that? With these questions,the researchers designed 2 formal studies with a view to providing preliminary answers to the questions.The purpose of Study 1 is to examine the impact of general creativity on individual malevolent and benevolent creativity,Alternative Uses Task and Problem-Solving Tasks are used to study 63 college students.The results showed that individual creativity could predict both malevolent and benevolent creativity,with fluency indicators playing the greatest role,which suggests that individual creativity has nothing to do with the moral inclination of creative tasks.Study 2 focus on the impact of creativity on individuals' daily moral behavior and the role that moral imagination plays between the two variables,Alternative Uses Task,Moral Imagination Scale,and Cheat-Lie Scale are used to study 117 college students.The results show that creativity can negatively predict unethical behavior,and the productive imagination plays a mediating effect between the two variables.Under the conditions of this study,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)There is a significant positive correlation between the general creativity of individuals and their malevolent and benevolent creativity,and the fluency index of creativity can positively predict the latter two;(2)Creativity can negatively predict unethical behavior,but has no significant correlation with ethical behavior;Analysis of the mediating effect shows that the influence of creativity on unethical behavior is likely to be mediated through productive imagination.