When you think of creativity, you likely envision a genius behind an easel or at the heart of a brilliantly crafted film. However, people can also tap into their creative energies to rise to power, enact revenge, or simply cause trouble.
Consider the last time you read a historical novel or watched a TV documentary in which the central figure started a war, went on a killing spree, or committed a meticulously planned set of heinous crimes. Maybe you imagined a different outcome where that historical figure used their powerful tactics to help instead of harm the world. You might also have wondered what drove that person to their evil deeds.
The Malignantly Creative
According to Hongyu Fu and Zhonglu Zhang from Guangzhou University (2024), "malicious creativity means coming up with new ideas or actions that purposely hurt people, organizations, society, and their symbols." Individuals with this trait might lie just to create problems or for their own amusement. These individuals may also use their creativity to outsmart colleagues or figure out ways to drain a relative's bank account.
Given the rapidly growing literature on the dark triad, you might imagine that malicious creativity is just another variation of these unfortunate traits (psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism). However, Fu and Zhang suggest that to understand the personality of the malignantly creative, one must measure their honesty-humility, one of six traits in the "HEXACO" personality model (extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and openness are the other five).
Morality also needs to come into play at some point, considering that being dishonest isn't enough to explain the horrific acts of the malignantly creative. As the Guangzhou U. researchers maintain, the creatively evil, by definition, act immorally.
The final piece of the puzzle involves the emotions that these individuals experience that either prompt their actions or arise as a result of committing them. Unlike people who do nice things for others, the "prosocial," those who do these good things experience a set of emotions related to morality, including gratitude, empathy, and sympathy; If they act badly, they feel guilty. Emotions can take on a sort of enduring quality, too. Emotions can fluctuate from one situation to another, but there are also moral and emotional traits that persist across time and place.
Testing the Factors that Drive the Malignantly Creative
Bringing together all these pieces into a prediction model, Fu and Zhang hypothesized that malicious creativity would emerge as a function of the personality trait of Honesty-Humility along with the other HEXACO traits of openness (meaning creativity) and emotionality (tendency to avoid stress or anxiety). Their online survey of 592 people (average age 24) also included questions about helpful emotions, guilt, and shame.
The measure of malicious creativity served as the primary outcome of the prediction equation. Composed of these 13-item survey which has three parts and includes questions like:
- Hurting others: "How often do you think of new ways to punish people?"
- Lying: "How often do you lie without worrying about being caught?"
- Playing tricks: "How often do you prank people to get back at them?"
As you can see, these items aren't just measuring psychopathic tendencies (lying and lack of remorse) but have more of a creative twist.
Overall, the findings showed, as predicted, that people low in honesty-humility had higher scores on malicious creativity. However, the qualities of guilt and gratitude canceled out this relationship. As the authors concluded, these prosocial emotions "may allow individuals to control their immoral thoughts and inhibit their malicious creative tendencies." Empathy and sympathy, however, did not alter the creativity-honesty relationship. Both of these prosocial orientations were more strongly associated with openness and emotionality, which, in turn, had little effect on malicious creativity itself.
Managing Malignant Creativity in Daily Life
Although correlational, the Guangzhou U. study's statistical controls allowed the authors to demonstrate a pathway from honesty-humility to the formation of harmful behaviors that people high in malicious creativity can devise. The study also highlights the psychological traits that might be at the root of events that you might otherwise find hard to comprehend. How could someone use their intellectual abilities in a way that causes horrific outcomes? The answer seems to lie at the intersection of personality traits and stable emotional characteristics that produce harmful thoughts without any moral restraints to accompany them.
When you move from large acts of evil to the everyday behaviors that cause you personal harm or at least concern, you can also gain valuable insights. Perhaps you've been working alongside a friend or colleague who you've trusted to take your well-being to heart. You've confided in this person about disliking a mutual acquaintance, expecting that your words would be kept in confidence. Instead, you learn that this supposedly trusted person went behind your back and reported the conversation to this other individual, verbatim.
The Chinese researchers recommend starting early in life to control the dishonest behaviors that drive these individuals. Children who might enjoy plotting ways to harm others could, theoretically, be educated in ways that shape them morally so those tendencies become overridden. In the short term, though, this doesn't provide a fix for the people you're dealing with now.
Instead, you can use the findings to manage the fact that empathy and sympathy won't help when it comes to curbing the maliciously creative. Rather than telling that deceitful person how their behavior makes you feel, appealing to their sense of right and wrong might be more effective. The good news is you can call them out for what they've done and not worry about hurting their feelings. Once you stake your position, it's possible they will refrain from harming you (though not others) in the future.
To summarize, the deceitfully creative and harmful traits that drive malicious behavior, both on a large and small scale, can be complex and disturbing. By understanding the personality and emotions that drive it, you can both comprehend and protect yourself from its destructive impact.