Social Exclusion Increases Antisocial Tendencies: Evidence from Retaliatory Ideation in a Malevolent Creativity Task

The experience of social exclusion has been shown to trigger aggressive, antisocial behavior. This outcome is particularly problematic if such retaliatory acts, in addition to being harmful, are also highly original and creative and difficult to anticipate and to defend against. For this reason, the present study investigated whether a laboratory social exclusion paradigm would increase malevolent creativity-creativity deliberately aimed at damaging others. In a sample of n = 81, male and female participants were either excluded or included by an alleged group of peers based on their personal preferences, and then generated as many original ideas as possible to take revenge on other wrongdoers (Malevolent Creativity Test, MCT). State affect was additionally assessed before and after exclusion or inclusion. Analyses revealed that social exclusion had significant effects on individuals' malevolent creativity performance, with the excluded group generating a greater number of vengeful ideas in the MCT that were also rated as more original. Greater harmfulness (malevolence) of revenge ideas was specifically observed for excluded women. While social exclusion was linked to increased anger and general negative affect, affect changes did not mediate exclusion effects on malevolent creativity. This hints at more complex mechanisms linking social exclusion and creative antisocial behavior other than immediate emotional responses. Altogether, our findings emphasize the role of situative factors for the emergence of malevolent creativity, suggesting that anybody may resort to highly malicious ideation under threatening circumstances.