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According to a study published by the American Psychological Association creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions.

Lead researcher Francesca Gino, PhD, of Harvard University stated that “greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks.”

The researchers conducted the study by using a series of psychological tests to gauge the subjects’ creativity as well as their intelligence. The participants were also paid a small amount for showing up. Then they were told that there will be more tasks or tests where they could be paid more. They were also led to believe that they could cheat without detection. However, all the papers had unique identifiers.

The results showed the more creative participants were significantly more likely to cheat, and that there was no link between intelligence and dishonesty — i.e., more intelligent but less creative people were not more inclined toward dishonesty.

In another experiment, participants were shown drawings with dots on two sides of a diagonal line and asked to indicate whether there were more dots on the left side or right side. In half of 200 trials, it was virtually impossible to tell whether there were more dots on one side or another. However, participants were told they’d be paid 10 times as much (5 cents vs. 0.5 cents) for each time they said there were more dots on the right side. As predicted, the more creative participants were significantly more likely to give the answer that paid more.

“Dishonesty and innovation are two of the topics most widely written about in the popular press,” the authors stated. “Yet, to date, the relationship between creativity and dishonest behavior has not been studied empirically. The results from the current article indicate that, in fact, people who are creative or work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas.”

It is also worth noting that the authors concede some limitations in their study particularly the situations in which participants were tempted by money to cheat. They proposed to have future research to investigate whether creativity would lead people to satisfy selfish, short-term goals rather than their higher aspirations when faced with self-control dilemmas.