Ethical Relativism Mediates the Association Between Openness to Experience and Negative Creativity

The present study investigated whether relativism accounted for the association between openness to experience and two distinct forms of creativity: positive creativity, defined as original and beneficial ideas, and negative creativity, defined as original ideas that may unintentionally result in harm. A sample of 200 participants (M_age = 21.79 years, SD_age = 2.64 years; 146 females) completed the Openness to Experience subscale of the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R) and the Relativism subscale of the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ-5). Positive and negative creativity were evaluated by two independent judges using a modified Cartoon Caption Task, in which participants generated captions for five New Yorker-style cartoons. Results indicated that relativism accounted for only the association between openness to experience and negative creativity. Specifically, individuals higher in openness to experience tend to produce more ethically ambiguous creative captions when they also endorse a flexible, context-dependent moral perspective. By contrast, positive creativity was more directly associated with dispositional curiosity and imagination. These findings contribute to research on the adaptive and maladaptive sides of creativity by suggesting that moral reasoning may be associated with the ethical valence of creative ideation. The study also highlights the importance of integrating personality and ethical perspectives into creativity research and provides implications for educational programmes aimed at fostering responsible, socially constructive innovation. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.