Malevolent Creativity

Is dishonesty affected by one's creativity and environment? Recent studies have documented the effects of creativity and environment on dishonesty respectively. However, little attention has been given to the interaction effect of creativity and environment. Based on past findings, we hypothesized that creative people, compared to their non-creative counterparts, may tell more lies in an enriched (vs. scarce) environment. An experiment was conducted on a sample of 97 undergraduate students to examine the moderation effect of environment on the linkage of creativity and cheating. Participants completed a creativity task and a questionnaire on general knowledge about Malaysia. Two-way ANOVA analysis showed that creative participants, as well as those in the enriched environment, were more likely to tell lies than their counterparts. More importantly, the interaction effect of creativity and environment was statistically significant. Specifically, the creative people were more likely to cheat in the enriched environment than in the scarce environment. The results not only shed light on the link between creativity and dishonesty but also suggest a new direction for minimizing dishonesty behaviours.

The darker shades of creativity have recently attracted great interest because negative and malevolent creativity are found in multiple domains. It is easier to conceive of creative acts that meet negative goals as uncreative, primarily because of their immoral and unethical nature. However, a complete understanding of the creativity construct may be obtained by assessing it within a valenced framework, wherein each component of creativity is positive or negative. In this qualitative account of malevolent creativity, we review manifestations of such creativities in the contexts of art, science, and technology. That is, original and subjectively useful actions taken by actors in each of these domains, which meet negative goals, with the deliberate intent to harm another individual or society at large. First, a brief review of literature in the areas of dark, negative, and malevolent creativity is presented. Second, qualitative accounts of malevolent creativity in art (forgery), science (academic dishonesty), and technology (cybercrime) are analyzed through D. H. Cropley‘s (2010) framework integrating valence and Rhodes‘ (1961) four Ps model of creativity. Each domain is first examined independently; subsequently, attempts are made to identify commonalities underlying malevolent creative behaviours across domains. Suggestions for future research in this emerging subfield of creativity are provided.