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Self-reported dark creativity has been related to lower concerns for all moral foundations, especially among those with dark personality traits. The present study aimed to extend these findings using real-world divergent thinking tasks with ethical and unethical instructions. Data (N = 1346, males = 388, females = 840, Mage = 20.93, SD = 5.48) were collected on creative performance, moral foundations, and dark personality traits, including trait deceptiveness. Divergent thinking responses were coded for fluency, flexibility, creativity, goal-directedness, deception, moral valence, and a virtue caveat (where participants explicitly denied to give unethical responses). Results indicated that for both ethical and unethical tasks, lower binding foundations (loyalty, authority, purity) were associated with higher creative performance, whereas higher concerns for moral foundations were related to more noble and positive responses and lower deception used in responses. Among dark personality traits, only trait deceptiveness was a significant mediator between low binding foundations and high creativity. Contrary to our predictions, none of the Dark Tetrad traits were significant mediators. These findings reinforce the salience of deception in the process and outcomes related to dark creativity; implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India witnessed a large surge in COVID-19 cases in April 2021, a second wave of nearly 350,000 daily new infections across the country. As of December 2021, cases have reduced drastically, in part due to greater vaccine coverage across the country. This study reports results on vaccine hesitancy, attitudes, and behaviors from an online survey conducted between February and March 2021 in nine Indian cities (N = 518). We find that vaccine hesitancy negatively predicts willingness to take the vaccine, and beliefs about vaccine effectiveness supersede hesitancy in explaining vaccine uptake. Furthermore, we find that mask-wearing and handwashing beliefs, information sources related to COVID-19, and past COVID-19 infection and testing status are all strongly associated with the hypothetical choice of vaccine. We discuss these findings in the context of behavioral theories as well as outline implications for vaccine-related health communication in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating how creativity can be used for nefarious purposes is slowly gaining traction. In general, dark creativity is likely to emerge in open-ended contexts where rules can be reinterpreted, by actors who display cognitive and moral flexibility. The current paper chronicles my past work in this domain, both empirical and theoretical, emphasizing the importance of understanding the nuances of dark creative intent and behavior. If the construct is misunderstood, or worse, left unacknowledged by academics, dark creativity can continue to lead to widespread harm in society. Interlinked with domains like morality, information exchange, and public policy, this paper discusses current findings and proposes future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forming an optimal identity is a complex task for young people because it requires distinctive personal resources that are flexible and sensitive to their context. One of these resources, creativity, has been explored in recent psychological literature showing ambiguous relationships with identity development. The present study aims to investigate if and when creativity can be a resource for individual well-being during late adolescence and young adulthood, by including the valences of positive creativity (the use of the creative process to achieve something beneficial to oneself or to the society) and negative creativity (the use of creativity to meet morally questionable goals). The focus is an application of a person-centered approach, latent profile analysis to creativity-identity issues. Participants were 338 adolescents who attended the last year of various high schools in Italy. We used five self-report measures of identity development, creativity valence and specific psychosocial correlates to examine the association between creativity valences, identity processes and both well- and ill-being. Using LPA, we found evidence of four qualitatively and quantitatively distinct subgroups or types of individuals differentiated on the basis of the interplay between creativity and identity. Suggestions for developing interventions to foster creativity in this age group are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream Hindi cinema, or Bollywood, has often clustered female characters into a finite number of gendered tropes, from damsels in distress, Hindu goddesses, virtuous wives and mothers, to vamps, molls, vindictive mothers-in-law, and justice-seeking avengers. Recently, women-centric cinema has attempted to depart from such stereotypical portrayals, with movies such as Queen, Pink, and Tumhari Sulu. The present study investigates the nature of female rebellion in women-centric Bollywood movies from 2007 to 2017, delineated by a major act of rebellion undertaken by the female protagonist(s), the antecedents to the major act, the immediate reactions to, and the cinematic consequences of this act. Based on these criteria, four coders independently assessed 13 movies depicting rebellion in women-centric Bollywood movies. Quantitative analyses revealed a consistent story arc of rebellious depictions across movies. Qualitative analyses showed that major acts of rebellion occurred subsequent to negative antecedents such as disrespect, lack of freedom, abandonment, and inequality. Overall, the study contributes to understanding the contemporary portrayal of female rebellion in Bollywood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanitation policies in India have primarily focused on infrastructure development, through building latrines and toilets. Given the persistence of open defecation in India despite such efforts, emphases on behavioral change interventions are crucial. We explore why and how the dual nature of purity and degradation in public and private spaces is relevant to such problems. In the context of sanitation and health policies in India, we propose an intervention that exploits social norms associated with purity via the use of religious imagery in public spaces as a deterrent for unhygienic sanitation behaviors. This intervention falls within the framework of nudging, which has received great emphasis in recent policy discussions. In the absence of empirical data on the intervention, this paper takes into account considerations of ethics, implications, cost, and scalability; suggestions on implementing the intervention at various levels of government are provided keeping in mind India’s socio-cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gossip is comprised of evaluative talk about absent others. Although such evaluations may be moral or non-moral, moral judgments often precede the transmission of gossip. This work explored the salience of moral and non-moral motivations to transmit gossip-like information. Two studies explored the relationships between the general tendency to gossip, transmission of, and interest in gossip, five moral foundations (Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity), their sacredness in relational contexts, and moral and non-moral motives to gossip. Results from Studies 1 (negative gossip - infidelity) and 2 (positive gossip - fidelity) indicated that moral motives to gossip were more important than non-moral motives. The contribution of morality in perpetuating gossip was discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bechdel test is a popular measure used to examine the adequacy of representation of women in movies, and other media. Although often applied to Hollywood movies, the test has rarely, if ever, been used to assess Hindi cinema. This paper adopts, adapts, and extends the original Bechdel test to scrutinise stereotypical, non-stereotypical, and typical dialogic content of same-sex conversations in three genres of Hindi cinema – top-grossing blockbuster films, women-centric movies, and parallel cinema. Using a qualitative approach to code dialogues, and quantifying subsequent frequencies, the current work highlights the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of female characters in contemporary Hindi cinema. The time taken for men to speak to men and women to speak to women was also quantified. While women-centric and parallel films depict a more balanced portrayal of male and female characters, top-grossing films are heavily lopsided, with some being devoid of a second female lead, and hence of female-to-female dialogues. Male characters spoke of more varied areas, both stereotypical and non-stereotypical, than women particularly in top-grossing content. The implications of such depictions in cinema, and their subsequent effect on perceptions of men and women in society, is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the dark side of creativity and negative creativity are shaping into legitimate subconstructs, measures to assess the same remain to be validated. To meet this goal, two studies assessed the convergent, predictive, and criterion-related validities of two valence-inclusive creativity measures. One measure assessed the self-report endorsement of social creativity, and the other was an Alternate Uses Test (AUT) assessing generation of nonsocial creativity. Participants (N = 129, 88 women,Mage = 25.09 years,SD = 10.03) completed the two creativity measures and three Dark Triad personality scales (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) through an online form. Correlations and multiple regressions were employed in the studies. Study 1 assessed the convergent and predictive validities between the two measures. Results indicated a strong convergence on the measurement of positive creativity, but not on negative creativity. Study 2 used the Dark Triad of personality as an external criterion to evaluate the criterion-related validity of the measurement of negative creativity. Although the Dark Triad predicted the self-reported endorsement of negative creativity, there was no discernable relationship with the generation of negative-creative responses on the AUT. Implications of current results, and suggestions for future metrics of valence-inclusive creativity are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study associates the subclinical dark triad (DT) of personality—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, and their composite—with negative creativity. An instrument developed by the author assessed the likelihood of engaging in creativity, where negative creativity was defined as an act that is original and useful to the individual. The strength of association between creativity, positivity, and negativity was assessed via an Implicit Association Test. The DT scales, Creativity measure, and the IAT were administered to 51 Indian adults (Mage = 22.3 years, 27 women). Multiple regression analyses revealed positive associations between narcissism and positive creativity, and between psychopathy and negative creativity. Further, the composite DT score predicted engagement in negative creativity. The associative strength between negativity and creativity on the IAT was not significant, though corollaries were drawn. Limitations and contributions of this study are outlined, and suggestions for future research are summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]