Fast and furious: The influence of implicit aggression, premeditation, and provoking situations on malevolent creativity

Being intentionally harmful in original ways has been termed "malevolent creativity." The empirical study of malevolent creativity is still in its infancy, so developing a strong foundation of its antecedents is paramount. Three factors were identified as potentially influencing the generation of malevolently creative ideas: implicit aggression, which is aggression that is beyond one's conscious awareness; premeditation, a facet of impulsivity that pertains to the degree of planning and forethought an individual engages in before acting; and situations that condone or otherwise provoke the use of malevolent creativity. Consistent with our hypotheses, and in accordance with the theory of trait activation, a 3-way interaction among those factors was obtained. Specifically, the interaction indicates that individuals who are more implicitly aggressive and less premeditative are more likely to be malevolently creative in response to situations that provoke malevolent creativity.