The dark side of creativity

We have heard a lot about the benefits of creativity but very little of its dark side. Will creators pay a price for their creativity?

Recent psychological research has begun to look at the dark side of creativity and has made interesting findings.

Liars

An alien when first observing humans may wonder why we pay someone else for them to lie to us. We will have to explain that we call them fiction, TV shows and fantasy films, not lies.

Then we will admit that sometimes we like / be deceived, especially when lies are much more interesting than reality.

Thus, we can expect that creators should be better at lying.

And indeed, this seems right: Walczyk et al. (2008) examined it by giving people a series of daily problems to deal with. High creators lie more and are better than less creative people.

Arrogant

On the positive side, creators are generally open to new experiences, but are they easily reconciled?

Until now, there have been many researches on agreeableness, which is one of the 5 basic aspects of personality, which has been mixed.

The new study examined 2 alternative types of agreeableness (Silvia et al., 2011). This study did not find a link between cuteness and creativity, but found a strong negative association with modesty.

In other words, creators tend to become arrogant.

Suspicious

Is there a link between skeptical thoughts and increased creativity?

Consider this: becoming cynical means being more likely to not believe the appearances and have a desire to discover what's really going on. In other words, skepticism fosters a kind of 'what happens if' attitude: that kind of attitude is precisely associated with creativity.

Skepticism can also nurture thinking flexibility. Instead of accepting things at superficial values, people with minds or doubts try to see things from different perspectives. That is another sign of creativity.

When Mayer and Mussweiler (2011) examined this viewpoint experimentally, they discovered evidence supporting it. Participants are made to be skeptical to come up with more creative ideas and show greater cognitive flexibility.

But it is important that these results are only discovered when participants become creative in private. When people think creative ideas will be made public, skeptical thoughts do not increase creativity.

Perhaps that is why it is difficult to discover creators. They are more likely to be skeptical about others and keep creative ideas for themselves.

Evil

Until now creators were considered arrogant, skeptical and lying but not really bad. But maybe there is something to the evil genius prejudice?

Through a series of studies Gino and Ariely (2011) found that creators reveal all kinds of dishonest characteristics:

Creators are more likely to play cheating in the lab. The creator then justifies their dishonesty better.

While creativity brings all kinds of positive and useful results, it also allows people to deceive more easily, and cover up their deceitful behavior.

Crime

Does creativity help you become a good criminal?

There are certainly examples of creative criminals. Examples are famous thieves in the UK, Shirley Pitts.

But that may be an unusual exception because there is little definite evidence that creativity is unusually high among criminals (Cropley & Cropley, 2011). On average, criminals show relatively low levels of creativity, low levels of restraint and lack of compliance with social rules.

However, there is some evidence that when it comes to separate crimes, criminals are creative. Because it is their "work".

Or perhaps the really creative criminals are too creative to be caught .

Crazy

There is a strong connection in public opinion between madness and creativity. However, the evidence is uncertain.

Surely, creators have higher scores on mental illness, meaning they tend to be more cold, anti-social, selfish, self-centered and low empathy. But overall this is balanced by their high self-esteem, high intellect and their ability to control those overly bad traits.

It also depends on your genius. On average, the best mental health among creative geniuses is natural scientists (like physicists and chemists), the worst among social scientists (including the home). psychology), worse in anthropologists and worst artists (Simonton, 2009).

Simonton argues that creative geniuses are not necessarily crazy, a better word to describe them is eccentric.

Conclusion

Thus, creativity is not entirely positive. Creators are more likely to be arrogant, good lies, or Suspicious, and maybe just a little crazy - call it unusual or eccentric.

But what would the world look like without the eccentric creators? I will tell you: A very boring place.

So, maybe you will think twice when next time you admit how creative you are!