From Book to Bludgeon: A Closer Look at Unsolicited Malevolent Responses on The Alternate Uses Task

Abstract

The alternate uses task (AUT) is one of the most commonly utilized measures of divergent thinking within the creativity research literature. Some participants respond to the AUT by describing the possibility of using various common objects in a violent way (e.g., beat someone with a book), and this unsolicited inclination is termed malevolent creativity. In this study, participant responses on the AUT were systematically coded for malevolent uses, and the relations among malevolence and various individual differences including sex, ideational fluency, and originality, were examined. Results revealed that male participants generated significantly more malevolent responses to the AUT than did women, despite no significant sex differences on originality or fluency. In addition, participant originality significantly predicted malevolence, although ideational fluency did not. Taken together, these findings suggest that malevolent responses on the AUT do not arise simply when very many uses are generated (i.e., when fluency is high) but may represent a particular inclination, disproportionately displayed by males, toward utilizing divergent thinking in a potentially violent way.

Acknowledgments

We thank Jessica Morganfield for her critical assistance with inter-rater reliability.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest