The Effect Of Awe On Malevolent Creativity

On September 11,2001,the World Trade Center in New York,United States,was hit by two civilian airliners hijacked by terrorists,causing huge losses.This was the "911 incident" that shocked the world.Since then,malevolent creativity has become a hot spot for psychologists.Studies have shown that malevolent creativity is related to the individual’s situation,personality characteristics and emotional state.As an emerging research field in recent years,awe emotion has attracted widespread attention from researchers due to its positive psychological aftereffects and important practical significance.It is unknown how awe emotions affect malevolent creativity as one of many emotions.Therefore,this study designed two experiments to explore the relationship between awe and malevolent creativity,and to explore the internal mechanism of this relationship.Experiment 1,three specific emotions(awe,jealousy and neutral emotions)were induced by memory method to explore the influence of awe on malevolent creativity.The dependent variable was measured by the combination of malicious creativity behavior scale and negative situation task.Results: the scores of malicious creativity in awe group were significantly lower than those in jealousy group and neutral group.The results showed that compared with jealousy and neutral emotions,awe significantly reduced the level of malicious creativity.Experiment 2,the specific emotions(positive awe emotion,negative awe emotion,neutral emotion)were induced by video method to explore the influence of awe emotion with different potency on malevolent creativity,and the cognitive flexibility of intermediary variables was introduced to further understand the internal mechanism of awe emotion on malevolent creativity.The results showed that: first,compared with negative awe and neutral emotion,positive awe has the lowest score of malevolent creativity;second,cognitive flexibility has a significant intermediary effect in the impact of negative awe on malevolent creativity,but no significant intermediary effect in the impact of positive awe on malevolent creativity.In conclusion,this study reveals that awe has a significant impact on malicious creativity.Specifically,positive awe can significantly reduce the malicious creativity of individuals,negative awe can significantly improve the malicious creativity of individuals,and the impact of negative awe on malicious creativity is mediated by cognitive flexibility.