Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid I can, but I won't: Authentic people generate more malevolently creative ideas, but are less likely to implement them in daily life Xiaobo Xu a , Jingwen Zhao a , Mengya Xia b , Weiguo Pang a, ⁎ a School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China b Department of Psychology, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Authenticity Malevolent creativity Moral disengagement Mediation ABSTRACT The current study examined the relationship between authenticity and malevolent creativity (MC), as well as a potential mediating path. Two hundred and eighty-six Chinese participants (216 female; mean age = 21.20, SD = 3.56) were recruited via an online survey website, in which they were asked to complete the Authenticity Scale, Moral Disengagement Scale, an open-ended MC problem solving task, and the MC Behavior Scale. The results revealed discriminated correlation patterns between authenticity and different measures of MC. Specifically, authenticity was positively associated with the fluency and uniqueness scores of the MC problem solving task, but negatively associated with the frequency of MC behavior engagement in real life. Moreover, moral disengagement fully mediated the relationship between authenticity and MC behavior. These findings indicate that although authentic people generate more MC ideas, they are less likely to act on MC behaviors in daily life due to lower levels of moral disengagement. Implications and limitations are discussed in detail. 1. Introduction Authenticity, referring to knowing one's true self and acting in congruence with the true self, is a concept rooted in humanistic psy- chology (Barnett & Deutsch, 2016; Wood et al., 2008). Related to its focus on living authentically and being self-concordant, prior studies have repeatedly documented positive associations between authenticity and a wide array of well-being indicators, including self-esteem, re- lationship satisfaction, and subjective well-being (Sheldon et al., 1997; Wood et al., 2008). Theoretically, authenticity may also promote creativity. In general, creativity is defined as the ability to generate ideas or solutions that are both original and useful (Runco & Jaeger, 2012; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). Mapping into the dual pathways of the creativity model (Nijstad et al., 2010), authenticity can fuel either the flexibility or persistence pathway to facilitate creative performance. Specifically, authentic in- dividuals are usually more willing to freely express their opinions, embrace unexpected changes, and assimilate novel experiences (Hodgins & Knee, 2002; Kernis & Goldman, 2006), which make them more flexible in the scope of idea generation. In addition, authentic individuals are usually intrinsically motivated (Van den Bosch & Taris, 2018) and highly engaged (Reis et al., 2016), which can help them focus on problems in hand and explore possible solutions more persis- tently. In line with these theoretical perspectives, researchers have recently begun to establish a positive association between authenticity and workplace creativity (Afridi et al., 2020; Montani et al., 2019). For example, Afridi et al. (2020) found that authentic employees reported higher levels of innovative work behavior. In addition, numerous stu- dies have shown that authentic leadership can facilitate subordinates' creative performance (Černe et al., 2013; Rego et al., 2014; Ribeiro et al., 2019), thus offering indirect evidence for the positive authenti- city-creativity association. Each coin has two sides, so does creativity. Besides its typical manifestation that aims to increase individual welfare and facilitate societal progress, individuals' creative potential can also be in- tentionally utilized to harm people (e.g., others or oneself), property (e.g., bank), and processes (e.g., public transportation), known as malevolent creativity (MC) (Cropley et al., 2008; Harris et al., 2013; Harris & Reiter-Palmon, 2015; Lee & Dow, 2011; Reiter-Palmon, 2018). Broadly speaking, malevolent behaviors such as lying, cheating, bul- lying, theft, kidnap, sexual harassment, and terrorist acts, can all be viewed as MC as long as that behavior is also original to some extent. Therefore, MC can be clearly distinguished from typical/benevolent creativity given its inclusion of “harmfulness” in addition to “origin- ality” and “usefulness” (Gutworth et al., 2018; Harris & Reiter-Palmon, 2015). Relevant to the current study, an interesting yet unexplored https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110431 Received 21 July 2020; Received in revised form 4 October 2020; Accepted 5 October 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North ZhongShan Road, Shanghai 200062, China. E-mail address: wgpang@psy.ecnu.edu.cn (W. Pang). Personality and Individual Differences 170 (2021) 110431 0191-8869/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T