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.
This study investigated how cooperative and competitive interaction modes affect the group creative performance. The participants were recruited as dyads to solve 2 problems either demanding divergent thinking (alternative uses task, AUT) or not (object characteristic task, OCT). The dyads solved 1 of the 2 problems in the cooperative mode and the other in the competitive mode. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning was used to record their neural activities in the prefrontal and right temporal-parietal junction (r-TPJ) regions. Results revealed the dyads showed higher AUT fluency, AUT originality, OCT fluency, and cooperation level in the cooperative mode than in the competitive mode. The fNIRS data revealed increased (task-baseline) interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (r-DLPFC) and r-TPJ, only for dyads in the AUT/cooperation condition. In both r-DLPFC and r-TPJ, the IBS of dyads in the AUT/cooperation condition was stronger than in the AUT/competition and OCT/cooperation. Moreover, a stronger IBS was evoked between the regions in prefrontal and posterior temporal regions in the AUT/cooperation condition, as compared with the competition mode. These findings suggest that enhanced IBS may underlie the positive effects of cooperation as compared with the competition in terms of group creativity.
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