Abstract
The present study developed the malevolent creativity behavior scale (MCBS), which contains 13 items and was designed to measure individuals’ malevolent creativity through the behavior of daily lives. A total of 958 participants from different regions of China completed the MCBS in an online fashion. Cronbach’s α coefficient, using the 908 MCBSs with entirely complete data, indicated that the MCBS had satisfactory reliability. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that the MCBS had 3 dimensions: hurting people, lying, and playing tricks. MCBS scores were positively correlated with individuals’ aggression, openness, extraversion, and scores on the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale (RIBS). MCBS scores also predicted individuals’ malevolent creativity performances when solving realistic, open-ended problems. The MCBS has a simple response medium and scoring procedure. This, along with the adequate psychometric properties uncovered here, indicates that it is a useful tool for research on malevolent creativity. Given that the MCBS contains a relatively small number of categories and items, further research could expand the categories of items and develop and test more items. Moreover, it would be useful to test MCBS’s reliability and validity with other criteria. Perhaps future research could obtain actual MC data from criminal or other unambiguously malevolent samples.
Highlights
The traditional definition of creativity focuses on the originality and appropriateness of people’s creative products and the ability to generate novel and effective ideas (Sternberg and Lubart, 1996; Runco and Jaeger, 2012)
This allows the moral and dark sides of creativity to be distinguished from one another. It leads to a distinction between malevolent creativity (MC) and negative creativity (NC). The former involves the application of original ideas to purposely harm others, often to gain an unfair advantage through manipulation, threat, or harm
Some of the participants were required to complete MC performance tasks, the prediction being that the Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale (MCBS) score would be significantly related to actual MC task performance
Summary
Reviewed by: Barbara Colombo, Champlain College, USA Melissa Christine Davis, Curtin University, Australia. The present study developed the malevolent creativity behavior scale (MCBS), which contains 13 items and was designed to measure individuals’ malevolent creativity through the behavior of daily lives. Cronbach’s α coefficient, using the 908 MCBSs with entirely complete data, indicated that the MCBS had satisfactory reliability. MCBS scores were positively correlated with individuals’ aggression, openness, extraversion, and scores on the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale (RIBS). MCBS scores predicted individuals’ malevolent creativity performances when solving realistic, open-ended problems. This, along with the adequate psychometric properties uncovered here, indicates that it is a useful tool for research on malevolent creativity. Given that the MCBS contains a relatively small number of categories and items, further research could expand the categories of items and develop and test more items. Perhaps future research could obtain actual MC data from criminal or other unambiguously malevolent samples
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