Psychopathy and openness-to-experience as predictors of malevolent and benevolent creativity

Batey, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9818-7525, Hughes, DJ, Mosley, A, Owens, CE and Furnham, A (2022) Psychopathy and openness-to-experience as predictors of malevolent and benevolent creativity. Personality and Individual Differences, 196. p. 111715. ISSN 0191-8869

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Abstract

This study examined personality antecedents of idea generation when pursuing either benevolent or malevolent goals. Specifically, 308 participants completed two Divergent Thinking tests. A malevolent divergent thinking test (MDT) in which participants generated ideas to inflict revenge and a benevolent divergent thinking test (BDT) in which participants generated well-meaning ideas. In addition, participants provided self-ratings of their Openness-to-experience and Psychopathy. Drawing upon the Blind Variation Selective Retention Combinatorial model, we proposed a dual pathway model, in which Openness-to-experience was hypothesised to relate to BDT performance and psychopathy was hypothesised to relate to MDT performance. Structural Equation Models were consistent with hypotheses. Openness-to-experience was related to BDT but not MDT whereas Psychopathy was related MDT but not BDT. We also explored facet-level and aspect-level models, which revealed some interesting insights. In addition, we provide four key principles underlying the development of our MDT test that can serve as a guide for the construction of future tests.