The Link Between Family Support and Malevolent Creativity: The Mediating Roles of Reflective Rumination and Brooding Rumination

Previous studies have established a link between malevolent creativity and family environment, from the perspective of the external, but the underlying psychological mechanisms of how intra-individual factors influence this process remain incompletely understood. This study, based on the interaction model of creativity, aimed to explore the mediate effect of rumination on the association between family support and malevolent creativity. A sample of 1108 Chinese universities students was surveyed by the Family subscale of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, the Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale, and the Ruminative Responses Scale. The result showed that family support was significantly negative correlated to malevolent creativity. This connection was partially mediated in parallel by reflective rumination and brooding. It suggests that family support may reduce malevolent creative tendencies by inhibiting reflective rumination and brooding. Additionally, this study introduces a novel conceptual framework: the Environment-affective and cognitive process of malevolent creativity model, which enhances the understanding of malevolent creativity and offers valuable insights for designing targeted interventions aimed at mitigating its occurrence.