The effect of anger on malevolent creativity and strategies for its emotion regulation

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00847

Abstract

Abstract:

The current study aimed to explore the effect of anger on malevolent creativity and its underlying mechanisms and to determine whether such an effect could be modulated by strategies of emotional regulation. Experiment 1 compared the differences of malevolent creativity between individuals in anger, sadness, and neutral emotions and found that individuals in anger produced more and more novel malevolent ideas, emotional arousal, and implicit aggression mediate the effect of anger on the malevolent creative performance. Experiment 2 explored how different emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, expressive inhibition) influenced the malevolent creative performance of angry individuals. It was found that the cognitive reappraisal group and the expression inhibition group had lower levels of malevolent creativity than the control group. Emotional arousal and implicit aggression mediated the effects of two kinds of emotion regulation strategies on malevolent creativity. These results suggest that anger promotes creativity by enhancing implicit aggression and emotional arousal, and the cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition strategies can be used as effective strategies to weaken the malevolent creativity of the angry individuals.

Key words: malevolent creativity, anger, emotional arousal, implicit aggression, emotion regulation

CHENG Rui, LU Kelong, HAO Ning. (2021). The effect of anger on malevolent creativity and strategies for its emotion regulation. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 53(8), 847-860.

Figures/Tables 10

Figure 1. Experimental procedure in experiment 1.

Table 1 Experiment 1: descriptive statistics of emotions (M ± SD) and paired-sample t-tests

Experimental conditions	Pre-test	Post-test	t (33)	p
Anger group
Valence	6.18 ± 1.22	3.74 ± 1.58	8.80	0.000***
Arousal	4.97 ± 1.57	5.91 ± 2.15	-2.26	0.030*
Anger	1.56 ± 0.93	5.18 ± 1.83	-10.80	0.000***
Sadness	2.74 ± 1.85	3.15 ± 1.86	-1.19	0.242
Sadness Group
Valence	5.65 ± 1.18	3.27 ± 1.40	8.41	0.000***
Arousal	4.82 ± 1.31	3.56 ± 1.71	4.07	0.000***
Anger	1.97 ± 1.64	2.62 ± 1.74	-1.55	0.131
Sadness	2.03 ± 1.19	5.00 ± 1.81	-7.70	0.000***
Control group
Valence	5.62 ± 1.30	5.38 ± 1.21	1.19	0.224
Arousal	4.71 ± 1.36	4.59 ± 1.64	0.37	0.711
Anger	1.88 ± 1.30	1.79 ± 1.18	0.46	0.646
Sadness	2.53 ± 1.85	2.62 ± 2.03	-0.26	0.795

Figure 2. Malevolent and general creative performance in different emotion groups in Experiment 1.
Note. (A) MCT fluency; (B) MCT originality; (C) MCT harmfulness; (D) AUT fluency; (E) AUT originality. The error bars represent standard errors. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Figure 3. Mediation analysis using IA as the mediator in Experiment 1.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. The coefficient is non-standard coefficient, and the standard error is presented in ().

Figure 4. Mediation analysis using emotional arousal as the mediator in Experiment 1.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. The coefficient is non-standard coefficient, and the standard error is in ().

Figure 5. Experimental procedure of Experiment 2.

Table 2 Experiment 2: descriptive statistics of emotion induction and regulation (M ± SD) and ANOVAs

Experimental conditions	Pre-test	PI	PR	F (2, 78)	p	Post hoc tests
Cognitive reappraisal group
Valence	6.25 ± 1.35	4.15 ± 1.33	5.93 ± 1.10	40.77	0.000***	Pre-test > PI* PI < PR*
Arousal	4.65 ± 1.75	5.33 ± 2.07	4.40 ± 1.39	3.50	0.035*	PI > PR*
Anger	1.63 ± 1.01	4.15 ± 1.72	1.98 ± 1.03	60.64	0.000***	Pretest < PI* PI > PR*
Expression inhibition group
Valence	6.38 ± 1.31	4.25 ± 1.37	5.03 ± 1.39	42.54	0.000***	Pre-test > PI* Pre-test > PR IR < PR***
Arousal	4.85 ± 1.31	5.93 ± 1.64	4.25 ± 1.50	12.23	0.000***	Pre-test < PI* PI > PR***
Anger	1.70 ± 0.94	4.47 ± 1.75	2.88 ± 1.47	54.97	0.000***	Pretest < PI* Pretest < PR PI > PR***
Control group
Valence	6.25 ± 1.71	4.33 ± 1.54	4.28 ± 1.78	25.17	0.000***	Pre-test > PI*** Pre-test > PR
Arousal	4.72 ± 1.31	5.50 ± 1.95	5.15 ± 1.96	2.02	0.14
Anger	1.79 ± 1.18	4.35 ± 2.34	4.00 ± 2.92	24.11	0.000***	Pretest < PI* Pretest < PR*

Figure 6. The pre-test and post-test malevolent creative performance in different groups in Experiment 2.
Note. (a) MCT fluency; (b) MCT originality; (C) MCT harmfulness. The error bars represent standard errors. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. ‘Pre’ indicated the pre-test and ‘post’ indicated the post-test.

Figure 7. Mediation analysis using IA as the mediator in Experiment 2.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. The coefficient is non-standard coefficient, and the standard error is presented in ().

Figure 8. Mediation analysis using emotional arousal as the mediator in Experiment 2.
Note. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. The coefficient is non-standard coefficient, and the standard error is presented in ().

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