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Abstract
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Malevolent creativity involves the application of novel ideas to purposely harm others. Instances of it appear everywhere in daily life, such as fraud and money laundering. It is necessary to unveil the factors that can impact malevolent creativity and develop corresponding strategies to reduce its potential harm to society. Previous studies have found that malevolent creativity can be affected by factors such as unfair situations, emotional intelligence, and motivational orientation. Given that malevolent creativity requires individuals to harm others and aggressive behaviours often result from anger, it can be inferred that anger might be an important factor behind malevolent creativity. Moreover, considering that anger can stimulate general creativity through emotional arousal and be strongly relevant to implicit aggression, both emotional arousal and implicit aggression might play key roles in the association between anger and malevolent creativity. If anger can enhance malevolent creativity, the investigation of the impact of emotion regulation strategies on the malevolent creativity of angry individuals is a significant and novel research topic. The current study aimed to explore the effect of anger on malevolent creativity and its underlying mechanisms, and to determine whether such an effect could be modulated by strategies of emotional regulation.
Study 1, in which a total of 102 college students participated, had a single between-participant factorial design (emotion: anger vs. sadness vs. neutral emotion). There were 34 participants in each group. Participants in the anger and sadness groups were asked to complete the 5-min autobiographical memory task to induce corresponding emotions, and the participants in the neutral emotion group were instructed to complete a 5-min control task (record the schedule for the day in detail). Next, the participants were asked to solve one 10-min malevolent creativity problem (adapted realistic presented problem) and one 5-min general creativity problem (alternative uses task) in each group. Participants' implicit aggression was assessed using the preference-phrase method. Study 2, in which a total of 120 college students participated, had a single between-participant factorial design (emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal vs. expressive suppression vs. control group). There were 40 participants in each group. All participants were first asked to induce anger using the autobiographical memory task, and then solve one 5-min malevolent creativity problem. Next, participants in the emotion regulation groups were asked to regulate anger using the relative emotion regulation strategies (3 min), while participants in the control group were asked to complete a 3-min copying task. After the session of emotion regulation, all participants were asked to solve another 5-min malevolent creativity problem. Participants' implicit aggression was assessed as in Study 1.
In Study 1, the results showed that the anger group had higher levels of general creative performance, malevolent creative performance, and implicit aggression, than the sadness and neutral emotion groups. Additionally, emotional arousal mediated the effect of anger on both general creative performance and malevolent creative performance (idea fluency and originality), whereas implicit aggression merely mediated the effect of anger on malevolent creative performance (idea fluency, originality, and malevolence). In Study 2, the results showed that anger in the cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression groups significantly decreased after emotion regulation. No similar result was observed for the control group. The control group had significantly higher levels of malevolent creative performance and implicit aggression than the other groups. While implicit aggression mediated the effect of emotion regulation strategies on idea fluency, originality, and malevolence of malevolent creative performance, emotional arousal merely mediated the effect of emotion regulation strategies on idea fluency and originality. These results were independent of control factors such as individual creative potential, malevolent creative potential, and aggression in daily life.
In conclusion, these findings indicate that anger can stimulate individual malevolent creativity through both implicit aggression and emotional arousal pathways. Emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression can effectively impair the malevolent creativity of angry individuals. Theoretically, this study enriches the research field of malevolent creativity and provides evidence and interpretation of the effect of anger on malevolent creativity and its potential mechanism. In practice, this study confirms that cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition strategies can effectively weaken the malevolent creativity of angry individuals. This emphasises the necessity of regulating anger to avoid or reduce the social harm resulting from malevolent creativity.
Language: zh |