Understanding malevolent creativity

In J. Chan & K. Thomas (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Creativity (pp. 185-195). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Understanding malevolent creativity

David H. Cropley

Defence and Systems Institute

University of South Australia

James C. Kaufman

Learning Research Institute

California State University, San Bernardino

Arthur J. Cropley

University of Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

This chapter examines recent research aimed at understanding

the nature of malevolent creativity (Cropley, Kaufman,

Cropley, 2008). In that article the authors drew attention to

the fact that creativity, and the outcomes generated through

creative processes, need not be universally beneficial and

positive. They argued that creativity has a dark side, in

which outcomes are deliberately planned to damage others.

Such malevolent creativity can be seen in such disparate

areas as crime, terrorism, fraud, or general dishonesty.

As acceptance of the existence of a dark side of

creativity has grown, the authors have undertaken empirical

research to gain a deeper understanding of how people

conceive of these two contrasting poles. This chapter will

discuss findings from this work.

Understanding malevolent creativity

Creativity has traditionally been seen as involving the

“four Ps” (e.g., Rhodes, 1961): person, process, product, and

“press” (i.e., the social context). These constitute, as it

were, the public face of creativity. Guilford himself (1950)

referred to the need for creativity to lead to something

useful. Other early writers also emphasized the necessity of

including products in discussions of creativity (e.g.,

Clifford, 1958; Gordon, 1961; Rossman, 1931): More recently,

the emphasis on creative products was put with particular

vigor by Bailin (1988, p. 5): “The only coherent way in which

to view creativity is in terms of the production of valuable

products.”

The idea of “product” should be understood in a broad

way: Products are often tangible, and may take the form of

works of art, musical compositions, or written documents, or

of machines, buildings, or other physical structures such as

bridges and the like. They can also be intangible although

relatively specific, such as plans and strategies in

business, manufacturing, government and other less frequently

discussed areas. Finally, they can consist of more general

thoughts or ideas – systems for conceptualizing the world –

as in philosophy, mathematics, or indeed all reflective

disciplines, but also in religion, morals, and ethics.

From the social point of view, creative products are not

the personal playthings of aesthetes and intellectuals

seeking to express their individuality and realize

themselves, but are helpful reactions to practical problems

in the world. In other words, they aim at providing socially

useful solutions to problems. However, as will be discussed

in detail below, usefulness on its own is not enough: The

second vital element of creativity is, of course, novelty,

without which a product would not be creative, even though it

might be valuable. Bruner (1962) summarized the two basic

criteria of creativity in a psychological way: A creative

product must cause effective surprise in beholders. Although

interest in creativity as a source of useful, novel solutions

to problems of society is not a recent development, it has

been given increased emphasis in some modern discussions

(e.g., Higgins, 1994; Walberg & Stariha, 1992). Socially

useful creative products are seen as necessary to make the

nation prosperous, stable and – of particular relevance for

the present chapter – safe.

To be socially useful, creativity would obviously have

to benefit the system into which it is introduced (King,

1992). This idea is by no means new, nor is it confined to

aesthetic creativity. Both Bacon (1909 [1627]) and Descartes

(1991 [1644]), for instance, two of the founders of modern

science who were writing approximately 350 years ago, saw

scientific creativity as involving the harnessing of the

forces of nature for the betterment of the human condition.

Thus, traditional studies of creativity focus on what can be

called benevolent creativity. In general this is creativity

directed towards what most people would regard as

appropriate, ethical, or desirable purposes, whether the

field is artistic/aesthetic (the production of art, music and

poetry, for example), business (the provision of goods or

services in exchange for payment), or engineering and design

(the development of tangible objects for the benefit of

society). In a newer and more wide-ranging discussion,

Sternberg (2003) argued that creativity (along with

intelligence) must be balanced or tempered by wisdom, and

assumed that creative people’s wisdom will ensure that their

creativity serves the common good. There have been several

papers that have proposed a “moral creativity” (Gruber, 1993;

Runco & Nemiro, 2003; Schwebel, 1993).

In other respects too, creativity is almost universally

admired. It is a source of growth and renewal at the

individual and social level and introduces positive change in

spiritual, artistic, scientific, technological, economic,

industrial and other domains. Creativity is frequently

treated as a form of self-expression that involves personal

dignity, expression of one’s inner being, self-actualization,

and the like (e.g., Maslow, 1973; May, 1976; Richards, 2007;

Rogers, 1961).

Unfortunately, however, the psychological processes and

personal properties that are active in the generation of

effective novelty (i.e., in creativity) are capable of being

applied not just for positive purposes, but also to achieve a

range of negative goals such as gaining unfair advantage,

manipulating the system, avoiding responsibilities and more.

Negative applications of creativity are therefore frequently

seen in crime – where perpetrators generate effective, novel

techniques to achieve statutorily prohibited ends, and in

terrorism – where perpetrators generate effective, novel

courses of action that seek to spread fear in support of

their political goals.

The Dark Side of Creativity

Some studies of morality and creativity have suggested

that the two may not be as related as seems to be assumed, or

would be ideal. Andreani and Pagnin (1993) found that while

creatively gifted high school students gave more original

solutions to moral questions and puzzles, it was the less

gifted students who were more likely to endorse altruistic

values. Rappoport and Kren (1993) discussed amoral altruists

– people who saved Jews from the Holocaust yet otherwise

showed poor moral behavior.

Other empirical work on this topic looks at negative

outcomes or traits associated with creative people. For

example, different studies have shown that creative people

are more likely to be aggressive (Lee & Dow, 2011),

manipulate test results (Gino & Ariely, 2012), be able to

tell more different types of creative lies than less creative

people (Walczyk, Runco, Tripp, & Smith, 2008), be deceptive

during conflict negotiation (De Dreu & Nijstad, 2008), and

demonstrate less integrity (Beaussart, Andrews, & Kaufman,

2012). Thus, while it is common to associate creativity only

with positive traits, environments, and outcomes, there may

be little justification for this implicit “creativity is

good” bias.

In fact, it is clear that creativity can have a “dark

side” (McLaren, 1993, p. 139). At the very least, its

benevolence can be ambiguous. Clark and James (1999) gave a

number of examples of “negative creativity” (p. 311) in

organizational settings. These included finding effectively

novel ways of stealing from a company or of avoiding having

to do unpleasant or demanding work at the expense of others.

There is obviously a benefit for the person avoiding the

unpleasant work, but the person who has to do it instead will

not enjoy much benefit from the creativity. Such negative

creativity, however, need not have actual destructive intent:

People stealing from a company may not wish to harm the

company, but merely to benefit themselves – indeed, they may

have a vested interest in seeing the company prosper. It is

even the case that negative creativity may arise from well-

intentioned creativity or creativity that really is

beneficial to the common good: For instance, the discoveries

of Pasteur and Jenner laid the foundation for germ warfare.

Cropley, Cropley, Kaufman, and Runco (2010) provide a range

of examples spanning psychology, criminal justice, sociology,

engineering, history, and design.

Thus, benefit is a subjective notion. One person’s

benefit may be another’s ruin. This idea of subjective

benevolence, where creativity may benefit one group but not

another, makes it possible to apply concepts from creativity

to discussing fields of activity that are not usually

analyzed in terms of creativity, for instance crime and

terrorism. Where criminals and terrorists produce surprising

products (in the broad sense of “product” outlined above)

that are effective in achieving their purposes, they may be

said to have displayed creativity, despite the fact that the

products do not benefit the common good. Referring to Al

Qaeda, Benjamin and Simon (2002, p.400) made this point

succinctly: “They are genuinely creative, and their ingenuity

and desire to inflict massive casualties will continue to

drive them…”

In this chapter we are concerned with a particular

aspect of the dark side of creativity – those products (or

outcomes) that are deliberately planned to damage others

(Cropley, Kaufman & Cropley, 2008). If negative creativity is

someone stealing office supplies, then malevolent creativity is

someone stealing company secrets to sell to competitors, with

the deliberate intention of harm. This malevolent creativity is

seen most often in the domains of terrorism and crime.

Domains of Malevolent Creativity

In the conventional positive, or benevolent, sense

organizations see creativity as a means for gaining a

competitive edge – one company’s creative product gives it an

advantage over competitors until those competitors, in turn,

generate a creative product of their own. In the same way,

terrorism activities can be framed as a dynamic struggle

between competitors. Instead of the products being, for

example, consumer goods, they are the subway gas attack, the

airport metal detector, the aircraft hijacking and the

computerized facial recognition system. The events of

September 11, 2001 stand as testament to the value that the

generation of effective novelty – i.e. creativity – offers to

terrorists. If the terrorist acts of 9/11 had not been novel,

it stands to reason that they would have been anticipated. If

they had been anticipated, in other words if the mode of

attack had been known in advance, successful action would, or

at least could, have been taken to prevent them. There is

also no doubt that the terrorist acts in question were highly

successful (regardless of any person’s opinion of them), so

that it must be conceded that they were both surprising and

also effective. In other words, the attacks of 9/11 must be

regarded as highly creative. In the light of the prevailing

creativity-is-good paradigm, how can we conceptualize such

creativity?

Another area where malevolent creativity might be

expected to occur is crime in a more general sense. Links

between creativity and crime can be looked at in at least

three ways. Criminality may sometimes be a kind of accidental

by-product of creativity: Since creativity requires deviating

from the conventional, there is a permanent tension between

being creative and producing products that go too far,

sometimes to the point of breaking the law (whether or not

other societies or later generations would approve of the law

in question). The actions of artists who violate social

taboos for artistic purposes are an example. Brower (1994,

1999) has looked in detail at this aspect of creativity and

crime. Close to this is the idea that personality traits such

as recklessness or unconventionality, or subclinical patterns

of personal adjustment (Schuldberg, 2000-2001) may encourage

characteristics that are favorable for creativity (e.g.,

willingness to break rules), and these traits may lead to

behavior in aspects of life (other than producing creative

products) that is adjudged to be criminal in the society in

question at the particular time. An example would be Oscar

Wilde’s imprisonment for homosexuality. However, links of

these kinds are not the focus of the present chapter, because

the creativity does not have infringing against the law as

its principal purpose.

A second kind of link between creativity and crime is

seen when creative individuals break the law, not as part of

their creativity or as a direct result of their creativity

but, so to speak, on the side. A creative individual who

committed a murder or robbed a bank would be an obvious

example. The fact that the murderer was highly creative might

help him or her to plan and carry out the crime in a novel

way, but by and large the fact that the murderer was creative

would be coincidental. Once again, despite the fact that it

may be very interesting, this is not the constellation that

we have in mind for the purposes of the present chapter.

Of interest to us here is the case of the criminal

individual who deliberately generates novelty in order to be

a better criminal: A criminal intent is at the core of the

person’s motivation, and creativity is deliberately and

consciously employed as an instrument for achieving illegal

ends. Fortunately, the evidence is that most criminals are

not particularly novel or innovative. Eisenman (1999) showed,

for example, that prisoners rated by guards and other inmates

as creative typically generated little or no effective

novelty, but rather showed lack of inhibitions and low levels

of social conformity—what Cattell and Butcher (1968, p. 217)

called “pseudo-creativity”. As a result, anti-crime measures

are reasonably successful, even without high levels of

creativity.

A Framework for Malevolent Creativity

A logical starting point for understanding malevolent

creativity is therefore the criminal, or terrorist, products

of creativity, i.e., outcomes, actions, behaviours and/or

artefacts that are illegal and thus involve crime or

terrorism. This is then followed by an examination of the

processes and personal properties that lead to, or are in some way

associated with such products. Discussions of malevolent

creativity give greatest weight to negative consequences of crime or

terrorism for the rest of society, not for the criminals/terrorists.

Positive applications of creativity in order to assist

perpetrators or potential perpetrators such as in therapy, as

a productive and socially-approved pastime for incarcerated

criminals (e.g., art, theatre, music, or creative writing),

or as a pro-social activity for disaffected youth (e.g.,

participation in rap groups, theatre arts, or music groups),

are outside the scope of research in malevolent creativity,

no matter how interesting and important these areas are. This

omission is not because of lack of interest in such

activities, but because, although admirable, they do not

involve the generation of effective novelty (i.e.,

creativity) as a deliberate means to the end of making crime

better serve the purposes of the perpetrator: making a larger

haul, getting away with it, achieving a more widespread or

lasting effect, or in the case of terrorists, generating

greater devastation.

The con artist who devises a new method for defrauding

an organization or the thief who finds a new way to defeat a

security system may develop solutions that exhibit high

degrees of novelty and, when they work well, high levels of

effective novelty. Such solutions solve a problem the criminal

has – how to be effective in committing for personal gain

acts that are statutorily prohibited and avoiding negative

sanctions such as imprisonment. In this sense the

perpetrators, the processes and the products display

characteristics often associated with creativity.

Nonetheless, it seems that the current lexica of creativity

and law-enforcement are not fully equipped to describe these

situations and specify where they are creative and where they

are not. The lack, in mainstream thinking about crime, of a

model for classifying such cases – i.e. those where the goal

of the creative process is to achieve harmful, illegal, or

immoral ends – hinders the ability to analyse them and take

action against them. Research in malevolent creativity

therefore must expand earlier analyses of negative creativity

(e.g., Cropley et al, 2008; Cropley et al, 2010) and apply it

directly to crime/terrorism in order to:

broaden and deepen understanding of the psychology

of creativity by focusing attention on a seldom-

discussed aspect—its dark side

broaden and deepen understanding of the dark side

by examining the generation of effective novelty

for the deliberate purpose of achieving negative

ends, especially ends prohibited by law (i.e.,

crime)

broaden and deepen understanding of crime by

focusing attention on its creative aspects

examine ways in which this knowledge can be used to

enhance the response to crime

While this discussion touches on cross-disciplinary

aspects of the problem, the main focus of research in

malevolent creativity is undeniably the psychological aspects of

creativity.

A Rationale for Studying Crime and Creativity

Wolfe and Piquero (2011) observed that research on crime

is greatly hampered by the absence of theoretical

underpinnings. This means that the psychological dynamics of

crime – the processes and psychological influences on

processes – are only partially understood or are explained in

structural terms such as age, gender, race or level of

education. Agnew (2011) pointed out that among other things a

more comprehensive model of crime would offer new insights

into understanding it and would suggest new research

questions. Although they were writing in a more general way

about the need to study the application (or misapplication)

of creativity for many kinds of negative ends and not just

crime, James and Taylor (2010) discussed more explicit

reasons why more knowledge about the negative application of

creativity is needed, that are relevant to this discussion.

The reasons they gave included:

helping to identify people most likely to generate

harmful novelty (when applied to crime this

suggests a new dimension for criminological

studies, especially forensic psychology)

identifying the circumstances that promote the

generation of negative creativity

working out ways of analysing particular situations

to assess their ‘vulnerability’ to negative

creativity

helping to design counter-measures against negative

creativity

They also mentioned another reason for wanting to

recognise and understand negative creativity which, somewhat

adapted for the purposes of this chapter, involves avoiding

the effort and expense wasted in ineffective actions. In

other words, they also highlighted the practical importance

of improving the efficiency (as distinct from the efficacy)

of law-enforcement. They specifically mentioned the

wastefulness of counter-measures aimed at guarding against

‘the “wrong” threat’ (2010, p. 35).

James and Taylor (2010) also turned specifically to

terrorism, quoting Schneier’s (2000, p. 238) dictum: “If you

don’t know the real threats against the system, how do you

know what kind of counter-measures to employ?” They cited the

US Committee on Science and Technology for Countering

Terrorism (2002, p. 214) which in effect called for more

divergent thinking in identifying threats and devising

responses capable of frustrating the threats. In other words,

the committee called for creativity in law-enforcement. A

similar call was made by Wilks and Zimbelman (2004), who

called, for instance, for reduction of predictability in

audit procedures through the introduction of surprise in the

form of variations in timing, type and randomness of checks.

A simple example of what this could involve in practice

is seen in the introduction of effective novelty into

policing in a measure adopted by the Boston police: Officers

found it almost impossible to get witnesses to provide

information on criminal behaviour because of fear of

reprisals if they were seen talking to police. They then set

up a dedicated phone number for text messages, which enjoyed

considerable success. Following this they rebuilt an ice-

cream truck supplied by a local ice cream maker to make it

into a mixture of ice cream truck and patrol car. The ice

cream company provided a supply of ice creams in a brand that

was well known in the area and very popular with children. On

hot summer days the truck drove through the streets of the

crime hot spot in the manner of an ice cream truck, with

uniformed officers giving away free ice creams and reminding

the children of the text messaging number. The children were

enthusiastic, the officers enjoyed the duty, and the number

of useable text message tips soared.

Another example of a surprising (i.e. novel) solution

for a now familiar crime is the ‘auto-immune’ airliner in

which, in the event of an attempted hijacking, non-lethal

dart-pistols would drop from the panels above seats where

oxygen masks are usually stored, allowing passengers to

outgun hijackers by a wide margin (Hari, 2010). We do not

necessarily recommend this solution, but see it as an example

of a suggestion for a truly novel countermeasure whose

surprisingness may make a contribution to changing the way

that people are willing to think about at least some crime,

to encouraging novelty in the way that crime is

conceptualised, and to approaching its analysis and the

design of law-enforcement from a new perspective.

Research in Malevolent Creativity

A possible impediment to research in malevolence remains

the creativity-is-good bias – the assumption, mentioned earlier,

that creativity is only associated with positive,

constructive aspects of products, person and press. Consider

the case of Thomas Harris’s fictional character Hannibal

Lecter. Is a criminal like Lecter creative? Certainly, there

is much evidence to suggest that he is. His escape from

prison (which involved literally wearing a guard’s face) was

both novel and appropriate to the task. He consistently

solves problems in creative fashion and demonstrates prowess

in creative insight across a variety of domains, from art to

interpersonal relationships. The main argument against Lecter

being creative is that his efforts are usually evil. He uses

his creativity to manipulate, intimidate, and kill. Can

creativity be evil – i.e. malevolent?

An important question – and a pre-cursor to a deeper

understanding of malevolent creativity – therefore is simply

how people perceive creativity and malevolence. Indeed, work on

how people perceive creativity in general has been limited.

Sternberg’s (1985) initial work on layperson theories of

creativity found that although creativity is seen as a

distinct construct from intelligence, there is a great deal

of overlap. Creativity was seen as less related to analytical

abilities than intelligence and more associated with such

characteristics as unconventionality, inquisitiveness,

imagination, and freedom. There were four dimensions that

emerged: Non-entrenchment, aesthetic taste/imagination,

perspicacity, and inquisitiveness.

Much subsequent work on such implicit theories of

creativity has had a cross-cultural focus. For example, Lim

and Plucker (2001) replicated Sternberg’s work in a Korean

population. One difference they found is that when people

rated social behaviours, they tended to rate negative

behaviours as being more associated with creativity. In

contrast, studies with Chinese populations have found that

creativity is associated with “moral goodness,” “contribution

to the society,” as well as the “connections between old and

new knowledge” (Niu & Sternberg, 2002; Rudowicz & Yue, 2000).

Indeed, according to standard Chinese traditions, a great

person must not only satisfy his or her own needs as a human

being but must also be devoted to other people and the

interests of the society as a whole (Niu & Sternberg, 2006).

Other research on implicit beliefs about creativity has

focused on classroom teachers (see review in Sarracho, 2012).

Westby and Dawson (1995), for example, found that teachers

said they liked creative students – yet when asked to define

creativity, they used words such as “well-behaved” or

“conforming.” When the same teachers were given adjectives

that were typically used more to describe creative people,

they said they disliked these types of students. Aljughaiman

and Mowrer-Reynolds (2005) found a similar paradox – teachers

said they like creativity, but often had different

definitions of creativity than researchers.

Several other studies have pointed out the negative

implicit views about creativity. Mueller, Melwani, and

Goncalo (2012), for example, found that people did not have

an explicit bias against creativity. However, actual views were

more complex. They manipulated participants into high-

uncertainly/uncertainty-tolerance and

low-uncertainty/uncertainly-intolerance conditions. People

primed to be tolerant of uncertainty showed positive implicit

attitudes toward creativity. People primed to be intolerant

of uncertainty, however, showed negative implicit attitudes –

despite positive explicit attitudes. Kaufman, Bromley, and

Cole (2006) found that people who saw themselves as either

very creativity or uncreative were more likely to believe

that creativity and madness were related.

Despite studies indicating that some people have

implicit biases against creativity and other studies linking

creativity with negative attributes, the question of how evil

acts are perceived to be creative (or how creative acts are

perceived to be evil) has not been addressed. Recent research

(Cropley, Kaufman, Chiera and White, 2012) has explored how

acts that show varying levels of malevolence are seen as

creative.

Cropley et al (2012) presented 626 participants with

four hypothetical situations and a total of 43 possible

actions ranging both in malevolence and creativity (one

sample situation is presented in Table One). A factor

analysis of participant ratings of each action’s malevolence

revealed five levels of perceived malevolence (Moral killing,

legal, immoral/unethical, illegal/nonviolent, and

illegal/violent). The “creativity is good” hypothesis

suggests that higher levels of median creativity will be

associated with lower levels of malevolence, and vice versa.

However, Cropley et al (2012) found that was not the case.

Ratings of perceived creativity reached a peak for those

courses of action that are legally/morally ambiguous – in

other words, those solutions that are neither clearly legal

nor clearly illegal. By contrast, perceived creativity was

lowest for those solutions that are illegal/non-violent.

Courses of action that were either completely legal, or

represented a form of officially sanctioned, or moral,

killing, and solutions that were overtly illegal and

violent/destructive shared similar, intermediate levels of

median creativity.

These results suggest that three levels on constraint

are imposed on the creativity of solutions depending on the

perceived status of the legality/illegality of the solution.

First, the condition of legal and moral ambiguity presents

solutions with the fewest number of constraints – a solution

is not bound by specific limitations of the law. In effect,

anything goes, and therefore the opportunity for novelty is

maximized. Second, the condition of illegality (non-violent)

presents solutions with the heaviest set of constraints. The

imposition of statutory boundaries – a speed limit, in effect

– rules out many potential solutions and thus limits the

scope for the generation of novelty. Third, there is a middle

ground that is characterized by a condition either of

legality (in effect, anything goes, as long as it doesn’t

break the law) or, by special cases of illegality. Unlike

illegal/non-violent solutions which are seen to be highly

constrained and therefore low in creativity, solutions that

fall into the categories moral killing and illegal/violent

are seen as offering more scope for the generation of

novelty. Moral killing for example, while strictly illegal,

is sanctioned. Thus it does not possess the freedom from

constraint of legal ambiguity, but neither is it constrained

by clear illegality. Illegal/violent solutions, by contrast,

are seen as offering greater scope for the generation of

novelty when compared to routine illegality, even though they

are illegal.

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Table One

Sample Scenario from Cropley et al (2012)

Scenario 1:

A group of people with little political power are unhappy with

the current state of the country. They have reached a point where

they believe that the typical channels to lodge complaints cannot

work for them. They decide to take action to draw attention. They

intend to:

1. Blow up a building during peak hours with the goal of

killing civilians.

2. Blow up a building during off-peak hours with the goal of

destroying property.

3. Set off a bomb in a deserted place with the goal of

demonstrating their power.

4. Stage a protest with the goal of disrupting traffic and

work.

5. Take a news station hostage and show a video of their

complaints.

6. Release a toxin into a public place.

7. Have all of their members sign petitions that are sent to

all government leaders.

8. Vandalize a government building.

9. Make a subversive video that they release on the internet.

10. Protest outside a government building.

Understanding malevolent creativity

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