Research is currently witnessing more investigations into malevolent creativity-creativity that is used to intentionally harm others. Inspired by previous methods to measure malevolent creativity, in the present study, we introduce a real-world behavioral task designed to capture individuals' capacity for using creativity for the purpose of attaining malevolent goals in response to everyday, provocative situations. In a sample of 105 students, we found malevolent creativity positively correlated with fluency in conventional creative ideation, as well as with self-reported typical malevolent creativity behavior in daily life. Moreover, performance on the malevolent creativity task showed positive correlations with the maladaptive personality trait of antagonism (PID-5) as well as individuals' state anger at the beginning of the experiment. Further, our multiple regression analysis revealed that conventional creative ideation, antagonistic personality, and state anger all explained unique, non-overlapping variance in the capacity for implementing malevolent creativity. As a whole, these findings suggest that different cognitive and affective factors, along with specific personality traits may each contribute to the expression of malevolent creativity in distinct ways. Future investigations striving to further decode the destructive potential of individuals toward others may benefit from this validated behavioral measurement approach to malevolent creativity.

Physical activity may improve stress resilience and well‐being. However, specific links to individuals' coping abilities with stressful events are sparse. This study tested whether individuals reporting more physical activity in daily life showed a higher capacity for cognitive reappraisal in dealing with potential stressors. Ninety‐eight participants reported their regular physical activity in the Freiburger Questionnaire on Physical Activity and completed a maximum performance test of their inventiveness in generating reappraisals for situations depicting real‐life stressors. The latter provides scores for overall cognitive reappraisal capacity (quantity of ideas) and preference for specific cognitive reappraisal strategies (quality of ideas; positive reinterpretation; problem‐oriented, de‐emphasizing reappraisals). Additionally, participants' anxious and depressive dispositions and general creative abilities were assessed. Results showed no association between time spent on physical activities per week and total quantity of generated reappraisal ideas. However, a higher degree of physical activity was specifically linked to a greater relative preference for the reappraisal strategy of positive reinterpretation. Opposite associations emerged for the strategy of de‐emphasizing reappraisals. The findings support the notion of more adaptive cognitive reappraisal use in more physically active individuals and may advance research on interrelationships between physical activity and cognitive and affective functions implicated in stress management.

Abstract. Everyday life often requires considerable creativity in dealing with challenging circumstances. This implies that creativity regularly operates in an affective context, however, this “C” of creativity is rarely addressed in contemporary research. In this brief review article, we address some important milestones in this nascent field of research. Starting with early accounts on emotional creativity, we discuss seminal research intertwining creativity and mood states, and finally introduce two recent developments in this field: reappraisal inventiveness as the capacity to generate manifold cognitive reappraisals for aversive situations, and malevolent creativity as creative ideation intentionally used to damage others. We discuss the conceptual origins of reappraisal inventiveness and malevolent creativity and provide an extensive review of past behavioral and neuroscientific findings regarding these differently motivated instances of affective creativity. Additionally, novel pilot findings and prospects on both lines of research will be provided, which may help to advance investigations into more real-world applications of creative cognition.

Background Physical activity is a health-relevant lifestyle factor associated with various benefits on physical and mental health. Several meta-analyses indicated effects of acute and chronic physical activities on elementary cognitive functions such as executive control processes, memory, and attention. Meta-analytic evidence on the effects of physical activity on creative idea generation, which involves a conglomerate of these elementary cognitive functions, is largely missing. Objective A twofold approach was used to evaluate (1) if there is an association between habitual physical activity and creative ideation and (2) if physical activity interventions (acute and chronic) enhance creative ideation performance. Methods Multilevel meta-analytic methods were applied to (1) evaluate the cross-sectional association between creative ideation performance and measures of habitual physical activity and (2) the effect of physical activity on creative ideation performance. Indicators of creative ideation (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, or composite score), creativity domain (verbal, figural), population (adults, children), gender, study quality, and publication year served as moderator variables for both meta-analyses. Analyses of intervention studies additionally examined the moderator variables study design (between, within), time of measurement (during, after), and implementation of intervention (acute, chronic). Results The applied meta-analytic multilevel analysis indicated a medium effect for cross-sectional studies (r = 0.22, SE = 0.06, p = 0.002, 95% CI [0.10–0.34]) based on 17 effects sizes from seven studies. The pooled effects of 28 intervention studies, providing 115 effect sizes, indicated a medium effect size of Hedges’ g = 0.47 (SE = 0.09, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.30–0.65]). Furthermore, a stronger effect was observed for chronic interventions of several days or weeks in comparison with acute interventions of one single bout. Conclusion This study adds important new meta-analytic evidence on the beneficial role of physical activity beyond mental and physical health outcomes: Physical activity has a positive impact on creative ideation, which expands the literature on the role of physical activity in more elementary cognitive functions such as executive control, memory, and attention. Moderator analyses suggested that chronic interventions showed stronger effects than single bouts of physical activity. Rigorously conducted randomized controlled intervention studies and more cross-sectional studies are needed to broaden the evidence in this nascent field of research.

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