关键词: 恶意创造力, 愤怒, 情绪唤醒度, 内隐攻击性

Abstract: Malevolent creativity is typically defined as the application of original ideas to purposely harm others. Instances of malevolent creativity appears everywhere in antisocial incidents such as financial crime, terrorist attack, and etc. Unveiling factors that can impact malevolent creativity and the underlying mechanism is of much importance to help reduce its potential harm to society. Previous studies indicated anger can induce aggressive behaviors and a high level of high aggression predicts malevolent creative performance. Thus, anger might be an important influence factor of malevolent creativity. A recent study has just proved that anger can enhance individual malevolent creative performance through the implicit aggression pathway and emotional arousal pathway. However, individual malevolent creativity can exhibit in forms of hurting, lying, and playing trick. Investigating the effects of anger on these forms of malevolent creativity and unveiling the underlying mechanism is a significant and novel research topic. Specifically, this study aimed to address the following two scientific questions: (1) what is the effect of anger on three forms of malevolent creative performance? (2) what is the pathway through which anger affects three forms of malevolent creative performance? This study had a single between-subject factorial design (emotion: anger vs. fear vs. neutral emotion), and recruited a total of 108 college students. Participants were randomly assigned to these 3 groups. Each group consisted of 36 participants. Participants in the anger and fear groups (negative emotion contrast) completed a 5-min autobiographical memory task to induce emotions, whereas participants in the neural group completed a 5-min control task (i.e. record the schedule for the day in detail; neutral emotion contrast). Next, all participants needed to solve 3 malevolent creativity tasks (1 task per form of malevolent creativity). During the experiment, participants’ emotional states were assessed using the Self-Assessment Manikin and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Participants’ implicit aggression was evaluated using the preference-phrase method. Participants also completed several scales that assess control factors such as Runco Ideational Behavior Scale, Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale, Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Results showed that during the hurting and lying tasks, idea fluency, originality, and harmfulness were higher in the anger group than in the neural group. During the playing trick task, only idea fluency and originality were higher in the anger group than in the neutral group. These results were stable even when control factors were considered as covariates. Additionally, implicit aggression mediated the effects of anger on idea fluency, originality, and harmfulness of all 3 forms of malevolent creative performance, whereas emotional arousal merely mediated the effect of anger on idea fluency and originality of the “hurting” malevolent creativity task. To sum up, this study suggests that anger can enhance 3 forms of malevolent creative performance, namely hurting, lying, and playing trick. The implicit aggression pathway is a common pathway through which anger stimulates all 3 forms of malevolent creative performance. However, the emotional arousal pathway is a specific pathway through which anger stimulates “hurting” malevolent creative performance. This study theoretically contributes to the research of malevolent creativity and provides evidence and interpretation of anger’s effect on different forms of malevolent creativity and its potential mechanism.

Key words: malevolent creativity, anger, emotional arousal, implicit aggression