Information for participants in the creativity study
conducted by Melinda Drabant, spring 2016
The purpose of the study was to replicate a prior finding that, because both dishonest behavior and creativity require one to break rules, there would be an association between creativity and dishonest behavior. The prediction was that putting people into a situation in which they could cheat would create a "rule-breaking" mindset that would then lead to higher performance on a creativity task.
To create a situation in which participants were likely to cheat, they were asked to perform a difficult math task on the computer. For some participants, the correct answer appeared on screen unless the right side of the screen was clicked. Those participants were told the computer did not keep track of whether the answer was on screen or not. However, the computer did keep track, thus it was possible to tell whether participants had allowed the answers to remain on screen during the task or not.
Although the experimenter did keep a record of whether or not each individual participant cheated, individual names were not linked to any of the study data, therefore there is no record of whether or not a specific person cheated on the task or not.
Although previous research has found that people who cheat also had higher creativity scores, that finding was not replicated in this study.
Please contact Melinda Drabant ([email protected]) if you have questions or comments about this study.
Thanks to all the students for participating in this study.
conducted by Melinda Drabant, spring 2016
The purpose of the study was to replicate a prior finding that, because both dishonest behavior and creativity require one to break rules, there would be an association between creativity and dishonest behavior. The prediction was that putting people into a situation in which they could cheat would create a "rule-breaking" mindset that would then lead to higher performance on a creativity task.
To create a situation in which participants were likely to cheat, they were asked to perform a difficult math task on the computer. For some participants, the correct answer appeared on screen unless the right side of the screen was clicked. Those participants were told the computer did not keep track of whether the answer was on screen or not. However, the computer did keep track, thus it was possible to tell whether participants had allowed the answers to remain on screen during the task or not.
Although the experimenter did keep a record of whether or not each individual participant cheated, individual names were not linked to any of the study data, therefore there is no record of whether or not a specific person cheated on the task or not.
Although previous research has found that people who cheat also had higher creativity scores, that finding was not replicated in this study.
Please contact Melinda Drabant ([email protected]) if you have questions or comments about this study.
Thanks to all the students for participating in this study.