The present study developed the malevolent creativity behavior scale (MCBS), which contains 13 items and was designed to measure individuals’ malevolent creativity through the behavior of daily lives. A total of 958 participants from different regions of China completed the MCBS in an online fashion. Cronbach’s α coefficient, using the 908 MCBSs with entirely complete data, indicated that the MCBS had satisfactory reliability. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that the MCBS had 3 dimensions: hurting people, lying, and playing tricks. MCBS scores were positively correlated with individuals’ aggression, openness, extraversion, and scores on the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale (RIBS). MCBS scores also predicted individuals’ malevolent creativity performances when solving realistic, open-ended problems. The MCBS has a simple response medium and scoring procedure. This, along with the adequate psychometric properties uncovered here, indicates that it is a useful tool for research on malevolent creativity. Given that the MCBS contains a relatively small number of categories and items, further research could expand the categories of items and develop and test more items. Moreover, it would be useful to test MCBS’s reliability and validity with other criteria. Perhaps future research could obtain actual MC data from criminal or other unambiguously malevolent samples.

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Creative things are always original, but they must be more than just original. They must also have some utility, effectiveness, or value. The present research tested the psychoeconomic definition of "value" and examined how value ratings fluctuated when individuals worked in groups or alone. This psychoeconomic definition of value is very different from that found in previous studies. It was based on ratings obtained after the students participating had been told that their grades depended on their teamwork. Previous studies have used hypothetical ratings of value, but here the ratings were meaningful: there was a contingency placed on making a good decision, and that decision focused on creative teamwork. This investigation also tested the idea that originality and value are both required for creativity. Psychoeconomic theory not only offers an objective and behavioural index of value. It also offers predictions about the "social costs" of working in groups. To test these ideas individuals received two tests of divergent thinking, either while alone (no social cost), working in a small group (low cost), or working in a larger group (high cost). Social preferences were controlled, as was extraversion. Results indicate that fluency did not diminish when the social costs were present. Moreover, originality increased when participants worked in groups. Findings also demonstrated that value judgments can be reliably assessed and that the interaction of value and originality accounted for a significant amount of the variability in creativity ratings.

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