When you think of creativity, you probably imagine a genius behind an easel or at the heart of a brilliantly directed movie. However, people can also tap into their creative juices if they want to rise to power, enact revenge, or just create trouble.
Recall the last time you read a historical novel or watched a television documentary in which the central figure started a war, went on a killing spree, or committed a well-planned set of heinous crimes. Maybe you imagined a different outcome of these events in which that historical figure used their bold tactics to help instead of harm the world. You might also have wondered what drove that person to their dastardly deeds.
According to Guangzhou University’s Hongyu Fu and Zhonglu Zhang (2024), “malevolent creativity refers to creative ideas or behaviors that deliberately harm others, organizations, society, and their extensive symbols.” People high in this tendency may go around on a daily basis telling lies for no reason other than to create mischief or amuse themselves. These are also the people who will create more than mischief as they put their creativity to use in seeking to outmaneuver their coworkers or figure out ways to drain a family member’s bank account.
Given the rapidly growing literature on the dark triad, you might imagine that malevolent creativity is just another variant of this set of undesirable qualities (psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism). According to Fu and Zhang, though, all that’s needed to peer into the personality of the malevolently creative is to measure their honesty-humility, one of six traits in the “HEXACO” personality model (extraversion, agreeableness, emotional........