Presentation Type
Poster
Presentation Type
Submission
Keywords
malevolent creativity, stress, sadism, psychopathy, dark triad, dark tetrad
Department
Psychology
Major
Psychology
Abstract
Malevolent creativity is creating original ideas with an intent to harm others. It is also associated with aggression and anger-inducing situations. To date, no research has examined stress as a potential trigger for malevolent creativity. We hypothesized higher stress would increase malevolent creativity (H1). Malevolent creativity is associated with the personality traits of the dark triad, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The dark tetrad expanded the dark triad by adding sadism. Sadism and psychopathy are often considered the most aggressive dark tetrad traits. We hypothesized sadism and psychopathy would separately moderate the relationship between stress and malevolent creativity (H2, H3). Participants (n = 82) were randomly assigned to: a stress condition (n = 41) or a control condition (n = 41). Those in the stress condition completed the Socially Evaluative Ice Pressor Test and those in the control condition completed the test with warm water. We measured situational malevolent creativity with the Malevolent Creativity Task, which requires human coding. We also used a novel self-report measure of state malevolent creativity that incorporates the Malevolent Creativity Task and the Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale. Our hypotheses were not supported, however, sadism (p = .01) and psychopathy (p = .02) separately predicted the novel Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale. The relationship between psychopathy and malevolent creativity has been established in previous research. We supplement this finding by demonstrating a relationship between sadism and malevolent creativity. The role of sadism is relevant to understanding real-world circumstances that involve malevolent creativity (e.g. terrorism, crime). If supported through further research, our Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale provides a valuable self-report measure of situational malevolent creativity. We found good reliability (alpha = .96) for our Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale and a significant correlation (r = .56, p = .001) between our Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale with the Malevolent Creativity Task.
Faculty Mentor
Dr. Janet Trammell
Funding Source or Research Program
Not Identified
Location
Waves Cafeteria
Start Date
10-4-2026 1:00 PM
End Date
10-4-2026 2:00 PM
Included in
The moderating role of sadism and psychopathy in the relationship between stress and malevolent creativity
Waves Cafeteria
Malevolent creativity is creating original ideas with an intent to harm others. It is also associated with aggression and anger-inducing situations. To date, no research has examined stress as a potential trigger for malevolent creativity. We hypothesized higher stress would increase malevolent creativity (H1). Malevolent creativity is associated with the personality traits of the dark triad, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The dark tetrad expanded the dark triad by adding sadism. Sadism and psychopathy are often considered the most aggressive dark tetrad traits. We hypothesized sadism and psychopathy would separately moderate the relationship between stress and malevolent creativity (H2, H3). Participants (n = 82) were randomly assigned to: a stress condition (n = 41) or a control condition (n = 41). Those in the stress condition completed the Socially Evaluative Ice Pressor Test and those in the control condition completed the test with warm water. We measured situational malevolent creativity with the Malevolent Creativity Task, which requires human coding. We also used a novel self-report measure of state malevolent creativity that incorporates the Malevolent Creativity Task and the Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale. Our hypotheses were not supported, however, sadism (p = .01) and psychopathy (p = .02) separately predicted the novel Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale. The relationship between psychopathy and malevolent creativity has been established in previous research. We supplement this finding by demonstrating a relationship between sadism and malevolent creativity. The role of sadism is relevant to understanding real-world circumstances that involve malevolent creativity (e.g. terrorism, crime). If supported through further research, our Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale provides a valuable self-report measure of situational malevolent creativity. We found good reliability (alpha = .96) for our Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale and a significant correlation (r = .56, p = .001) between our Situational Malevolent Creativity Scale with the Malevolent Creativity Task.
Comments
Research program for this project was the Psychology Honors Research Program