The Ties That Bind: Low Morals, High Deception, and Dark Creativity

Self-reported dark creativity has been related to lower concerns for all moral foundations, especially among those with dark personality traits. The present study aimed to extend these findings using real-world divergent thinking tasks with ethical and unethical instructions. Data (N = 1346, males = 388, females = 840, Mage = 20.93, SD = 5.48) were collected on creative performance, moral foundations, and dark personality traits, including trait deceptiveness. Divergent thinking responses were coded for fluency, flexibility, creativity, goal-directedness, deception, moral valence, and a virtue caveat (where participants explicitly denied to give unethical responses). Results indicated that for both ethical and unethical tasks, lower binding foundations (loyalty, authority, purity) were associated with higher creative performance, whereas higher concerns for moral foundations were related to more noble and positive responses and lower deception used in responses. Among dark personality traits, only trait deceptiveness was a significant mediator between low binding foundations and high creativity. Contrary to our predictions, none of the Dark Tetrad traits were significant mediators. These findings reinforce the salience of deception in the process and outcomes related to dark creativity; implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.