New psychology research reveals that wisdom acts as a moral compass for creative thinking

A recent study published in the journal Intelligence has found that wisdom plays a key role in ensuring people use their creativity for the benefit of others. The findings suggest that while creativity can be a powerful tool, it requires the moral guidance of wisdom to be directed toward socially constructive goals rather than selfish ones.

“A recurring concern in psychology is that intelligence and creativity are ‘morally neutral’: they can be used to help others, but they can also be used manipulatively or destructively. Many theories propose that wisdom functions as a moral regulator that helps channel cognitive strengths toward prosocial ends, but empirical evidence for this moderating role has been limited,” said study author Yuling Wang, a PhD candidate at Peking University and member of the Self Exploration and Meaningful Existence Lab.

“We also noticed a methodological issue: intelligence/creativity are often assessed with natural science–oriented measures, while wisdom is assessed with more humanistic, value-laden measures, creating a domain mismatch that may obscure how these constructs work together in real life.”

“Beyond this theoretical and methodological gap, we were also motivated by a broader real-world concern that feels increasingly salient in the AI era: human thinking can become more ‘computationalized’ — more procedural, efficiency-driven, and emotionally blunted — while people simultaneously crave genuine human understanding and care. From this perspective, wisdom may be a key capacity that keeps people psychologically ‘alive’ and helps ensure our abilities are ultimately used in service of the common good.”

To explore this dynamic, the researchers conducted two separate studies. In the first study, they recruited 132 participants to complete a series of performance-based tasks online to measure state-level wise thinking. The researchers achieved this by having participants read about difficult interpersonal dilemmas, such as a conflict between a graduating student and their parents over travel plans.

Participants wrote detailed accounts of how they would handle the situations. They then answered questions about their typical responses to such conflicts. This allowed the scientists to group the participants into high and low wise thinking categories.

Next, the scientists assessed social intelligence by asking participants how they would respond to everyday problems. These problems included consumer rights issues and family disagreements. The researchers also measured real-life creativity by asking participants to recall and write about a personal experience where they had to think outside the box. Independent evaluators scored these personal stories for creativity based on factors like unique perspectives and practical applicability.

Finally, the researchers measured prosocial behavior, which is the intent to help others. They did this by asking participants how willing they would be to share a limited oxygen supply with a stranger in a hypothetical submarine emergency.

The data provided evidence that wisdom acts as a protective buffer. Among participants who scored low in wise thinking, higher creativity actually predicted a lower willingness to help the stranger in the submarine scenario. For these individuals, a lack of wisdom seemed to allow their creative thinking to become self-serving or disconnected from moral action.

This negative trend disappeared among participants who demonstrated high levels of wise thinking. Their creativity did not lead to a decrease in helping behavior. This suggests wisdom prevents creative potential from being used in ethically problematic ways.

To build on these findings, the scientists conducted a second study with a much larger sample of 801 online participants. This time, they used self-report questionnaires to measure stable personality traits rather than responses to specific scenarios. The participants completed assessments of their integrative wisdom, which involves a balance of sharp thinking skills and moral virtues like fairness and benevolence.

The participants also completed surveys measuring their social intelligence, such as their ability to read body language and adapt to social situations. They answered questions about their general creativity, including traits like curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to take risks.

To measure prosocial tendencies, the researchers assessed social mindfulness. Social mindfulness refers to a person’s ability to be considerate of others in everyday moments. This includes respecting different opinions or letting someone else choose first in a shared situation.

The findings from the second study showed that among people categorized with high levels of trait wisdom, creativity positively predicted social mindfulness. For these wise individuals, being more creative meant they were also more considerate and socially inclusive. In groups with medium or low wisdom, this positive link between creativity and social mindfulness did not exist.

“The effects are not ‘huge,’ but they are meaningful in context because they speak to when creativity becomes socially constructive versus potentially ethically problematic,” Wang told PsyPost. “For example, in Study 1 (a constrained moral crisis vignette), creativity predicted lower willingness to help only among people lower in wise thinking; in Study 2 (everyday interpersonal consideration), creativity predicted higher prosocial orientation only among people high in trait wisdom.”

“Practically, this suggests that developing creativity alone may not reliably promote prosocial outcomes—wisdom-related capacities (e.g., balancing interests, recognizing uncertainty, benevolence) may be key to ensuring creative strengths translate into social good.”

The scientists also used network analysis to visualize how these traits connect. They found that highly wise individuals possessed a cohesive psychological structure where virtues like temperance were tightly linked to positive open-mindedness. People with low wisdom displayed a highly fragmented network, meaning their cognitive skills and moral virtues operated independently of one another.

“Our main takeaway is that wisdom seems to matter most for how people use their creativity,” Wang said. “Across two studies, wisdom consistently shaped the link between creativity and prosocial outcomes: higher wisdom was associated with a more socially constructive expression of creativity, while lower wisdom was associated with a higher risk that creativity could be misdirected in morally challenging situations.”

Across both studies, the researchers did not find evidence that wisdom similarly guided the use of intelligence. Intelligence tends to be a structured capacity focused on efficiency and accuracy. The scientists suggest that creativity is a more open-ended and value-sensitive process, making it much more responsive to the moral guidance that wisdom provides.

“We expected intelligence—especially social intelligence—to show a similar ‘wisdom-guided’ pattern, but that did not emerge robustly, which pushed us to think harder about which abilities are most morally malleable and when moral orientation becomes central,” Wang said.

As with all research, there are some limitations. The assessments of helping behavior relied on hypothetical scenarios and self-reported surveys rather than real-world observations. It is possible that people might act differently when facing an actual physical emergency or a direct interpersonal conflict.

The researchers noted that their studies focused exclusively on the humanistic domain, which involves social and ethical reasoning. Future research could explore whether wisdom plays a similar role in the natural sciences. For instance, scientists could investigate if wisdom guides the ethical development of new technologies or artificial intelligence systems.

Additionally, the studies relied on data from a single cultural context. Researchers could investigate how these traits interact across different cultures. This would help determine if the regulatory function of wisdom holds true globally.

Beyond these methodological limits, the researchers emphasized that their results should not be taken to mean that intelligence plays no role in moral situations.

“‘No consistent evidence for intelligence’ does not mean intelligence is irrelevant for prosociality; rather, it suggests that wisdom’s guiding role may be easier to observe for capacities like creativity that inherently involve meaning-making and value-laden interpretation, whereas some forms of intelligence may operate more instrumentally unless moral salience is explicitly engaged,” Wang explained.

“In the near term, our next steps will depend on available time and funding. Looking ahead, once we have the resources to extend this line of work, we would like to (a) test these ideas with behavioral outcomes and longitudinal/experimental designs (e.g., wisdom-building interventions), (b) examine whether different forms of intelligence (e.g., moral reasoning, ethical decision-making competence) are more “wisdom-regulatable” than the measures we used here, and (c) directly compare domain alignment (humanistic vs. natural-scientific assessments) to see when the coordination among wisdom, intelligence, and creativity becomes strongest and most predictive of real-world prosocial action.”

“One broader message is measurement-related: we think it’s important to align constructs within the same evaluative domain,” Wang added. “When wisdom is treated as a humanistic, value-sensitive capacity, it may be most informative to pair it with similarly humanistic assessments of intelligence/creativity—especially when the outcome concerns ethical or prosocial behavior.”

The study, “Can wisdom guide intelligence and creativity toward prosocial ends? Evidence from humanistic, domain-aligned assessments,” was authored by Jingmin Zhang, Yuling Wang, and Liuqing Tian.