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Creativity in Ethical Reasoning

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The Ethics of Creativity

Abstract

Two of the most creative and well-known studies ever done in psychology involved placing participants in ethically challenging situations. One experiment, originally conducted over a period of years in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram (see Milgram, 2010), asked participants to shock a” learner” in what was purported to be a verbal learning experiment. Unbeknown to the subjects, the shocks were fake and never delivered. The other experiment, conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo (see Zimbardo, 2008), randomly divided subjects into guards and prisoners. In short order, the guards started acting like true prison guards with a sadistic streak, and the prisoners started acting like true prisoners cowed by those guards.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wyoming, USA

    Robert J. Sternberg

Authors
  1. Robert J. Sternberg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Clark University, USA

    Seana Moran

  2. University of South Australia, Australia

    David Cropley

  3. University of Connecticut, USA

    James C. Kaufman

Copyright information

© 2014 Robert J. Sternberg

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Cite this chapter

Sternberg, R.J. (2014). Creativity in Ethical Reasoning. In: Moran, S., Cropley, D., Kaufman, J.C. (eds) The Ethics of Creativity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333544_4

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