The Dark Side of Creativity

With few exceptions, scholarship on creativity has focused on its positive aspects while largely ignoring its dark side. This includes not only creativity deliberately aimed at hurting others, such as crime or terrorism, or at gaining unfair advantages, but also the accidental negative side effects of well-intentioned acts. This book brings together essays written by experts from various fields (psychology, criminal justice, sociology, engineering, education, history, and design) and with different interests (personality development, mental health, deviant behavior, law enforcement, and counter-terrorism) to illustrate the nature of negative creativity, examine its variants, call attention to its dangers, and draw conclusions about how to prevent it or protect society from its effects.

David H. Cropley is Deputy Director of the Defence and Systems Institute at the University of South Australia, where he is also Associate Professor of Engineering Innovation. Arthur J. Cropley is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Hamburg and previously worked at the UNESCO Institute for Education in Hamburg. James C. Kaufman is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the California State University at San Bernardino, where he directs the Learning Research Institute. Mark A. Runco is E. Paul Torrance Professor of Creativity and Gifted Education at the University of Georgia, Athens.