Creativity

Cognitive psychology

Philosophy

Social psychology

Scholarship

Deception

Cognitive science

Psychopathy

Physics

Psychology

Astronomy

Political science

Epistemology

Great Rift

Interpersonal communication

Harm

Personality

Aggression

Theory & Psychology

The dark side of creativity entails using original thought to meet a selfish, negative, or evil goal, with or without the deliberate intent to harm others. Recent empirical advances have studied the behavioral correlates of such creativity, including associations with aggression, deception, and subclinical psychopathy. The time, therefore, seems apt to propose a theoretical framework for dark creativity’s development and manifestation. This article outlines the AMORAL model of dark creativity, which traces a creative action from its Antecedents to Mechanisms and Operants to its Realization, and to the subsequent Aftereffects and Legacy of the act. We use both real-life and simulated examples to illustrate the application of the theory across multiple domains, from law enforcement to interpersonal relationships. Our goal is to help guide future scholarship and measurement.

The evil within: The AMORAL model of dark creativity