The relationship between adolescents’ resilience and their malevolent creative behaviors

Abstract

<p id="p00005">Malevolent creativity is distinguished from general creativity due to its “harmfulness”. It is known that negative personality traits and threatening social situations may promote malevolent creativity via strengthening malevolence. So it seems reasonable to speculate the inhibitory role of positive personality traits (e.g., resilience) on the malevolence in malevolent creativity. However, it has been also evident that resilience is positively correlated with creativity itself. Thus, the two roles of resilience seem to be contradictory when malevolence and creativity are linked together. As a result, it is unclear that what the dominant role of resilience in malevolent creativity is. <break/>To tackle this issue, two studies were conducted with the hypothesis that high resilience may predict less malevolent creativity via weakening the malevolence. A moderated mediation model was further proposed to investigate the roles of coping style and stress on the relationship of adolescents’ resilience and their malevolent creative behaviors. Study 1 aimed to explore whether resilience predicts malevolent creativity in a positive or negative direction and whether coping style mediates the influence of resilience on malevolent creativity. A sample of 370 teenagers in study 1 completed the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CDRS), Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale (MCBS), Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire, and Runco Ideational Behavior Scale (RIBS). Study 2 aimed to investigate the moderating role of stress in the mediation process of coping style on the relationship of resilience and malevolent creativity. Another sample of 244 teenagers was recruited in study 2 to induce their acute stress using the Trier Social Stress Test before completing the above questionnaires. <break/>The results showed that: 1) the resilience scores of participants were negatively correlated with their malevolent creativity behavior scores; 2) Coping style played a complete mediating role in the relationship between resilience and malevolent creativity; 3) The mediating effect of coping style was moderated by stress where stressful situation weakened the inhibitory effect of positive coping styles on malevolent creativity. These results suggested that the positive quality of resilience can inhibit the harmfulness of malevolent creativity, but stressful situations can reduce the inhibitory effect of resilience. It shed light that cultivating the resilience of young people will resist the adverse effects of stressful situations, and it is necessary to guide the development of their creative ability.