Date of Award

4-2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Roni Reiter-Palmon

Abstract

Creativity, or the generation of novel and appropriate ideas (Plucker et al., 2004), is often seen as being highly valuable and socially desirable (Nakano et al., 2018). Although creativity is commonly perceived as a benevolent, pro-social construct (Bilton & Cummings, 2014), creativity can also have negative consequences. Malevolent creativity is commonly defined as creativity that is deliberately intended to harm others, oneself, objects, or processes (Cropley et al., 2014). Research has examined how various individual difference variables, such as gender and the Dark Triad traits, predict malevolent creativity. While these individual relationships have been closely examined, research exploring the relationships between all three variables has been limited, nor as aggression been considered as part of malevolent creativity. Using a sample of 225 adults recruited via MTurk, various findings were indicated. For one, results indicated that there were no gender differences in malevolent creativity. However, gender differences were indicated in the type of aggression displayed as part of malevolent creativity, with females generating more indirectly aggressive solutions as part of malevolent creativity, whereas males generated more directly aggressive solutions. This research also examined how the Dark Triad traits influence malevolent creativity and investigated how different types of aggression may interact with this relationship. The research also examined how gender may play a role in the relationship between the Dark Triad traits and malevolent creativity. However, these hypotheses were not supported.

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