The Effect of Infectious Disease Threat on Malevolent Creativity

Abstract

The behavioral immune system (BIS), which evolved to protect humans from infectious disease threats, prompts people to be sensitive to disease-connoting cues. A common denominator of many disease-connoting cues is benign physical abnormalities, such as birthmarks and obesity. Previous studies found that among people whose BIS was activated (e.g., people who were exposed to situational disease prime or chronically concerned about disease threat), disease-connoting cues could make people feel threatened by infectious disease and induce their malevolence. Malevolence is a necessary feature of malevolent creativity (MC), which is defined as creativity that deliberately leads to harmful or immoral results. According to the motivated focus account of creativity, a threat could promote creativity when creativity is relevant to the threat. Thus, infectious disease threats might increase malevolent creativity. However, whether infectious disease threats could influence MC is unknown. Therefore, the current study aims to explore the effect of infectious disease threat on MC by two disease-connoting cues (birthmark, obesity). In Study 1 (n = 174), a 2 (threat prime: infectious disease, natural disaster) × 2 (disease-connoting cue: birthmarked face, normal face) between-subjects design was used. Participants were asked to complete a malevolent creativity task (MCT). In Study 2 (n = 131), we used a perceived vulnerability to disease scale (PVD) to assess people’s dispositional tendencies of concerns about disease and selected high as well as low PVD participants. A 2 (PVD: high, low) × 2 (disease-connoting cue: obese, average-weight) between-subjects design was used. Participants were asked to complete the negotiation task to assess their MC. The results of Study 1 showed that, compared with participants in the normal face condition, participants in the birthmarked face condition showed higher MC fluency and total MC when they were exposed to situational disease prime. Compared with the natural disaster prime group, the infectious disease prime group showed higher MC fluency and total MC when they were provoked by a birthmark person. The results of Study 2 showed that, compared with the average-weight condition, the obese condition led to higher MC fluency and originality among high PVD participants. Compared with low PVD participants, high PVD participants showed higher MC fluency and originality when they negotiated with an obese person. Our studies suggest that among people whose BIS is situationally or chronically activated, birthmarks and obesity could increase MC, and people’s malevolent creativity might be induced by disease-connoting cues during the pandemic.