Social Exclusion Linked to Malevolent Creativity Through Rumination and Forgiveness

A cross-sectional survey of 427 vocational college students in China has found that social exclusion is positively associated with malevolent creativity—the generation of novel ideas intended to harm others—and that rumination and forgiveness appear to form a sequential chain linking the two. The study, published in BMC Psychology, was guided by the 6P Model of Malevolent Creativity and set out to clarify the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that may underlie the previously reported connection between social rejection and harmful creative behavior. Participants completed validated Chinese-language versions of instruments measuring social exclusion, rumination, forgiveness, and malevolent creativity, including the Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale, the Ruminative Response Scale, and the Heartland Forgiveness Scale.

The researchers used correlation analyses and PROCESS Models 4 and 6 with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to evaluate direct and indirect pathways, controlling for gender in the analyses. The results showed a consistent pattern: social exclusion was positively associated with both rumination and malevolent creativity, and negatively associated with forgiveness. Rumination and forgiveness each independently mediated the association between social exclusion and malevolent creativity.

Beyond these separate pathways, the analysis also revealed a significant sequential chain mediation, in which rumination and forgiveness operated in series between perceived social exclusion and malevolent creativity. According to the authors, these cognitive and moral-emotional processing mechanisms help explain how social exclusion relates to malevolent creativity among vocational college students. They suggest that interventions aimed at reducing rumination and fostering forgiveness may reduce harmful creative behaviors stemming from social rejection, although the study's cross-sectional design means the direction of these relationships cannot be established from the data alone.

The findings add to a growing body of work on the darker side of creativity, where the same generative thinking that produces innovation can be directed toward harming others. By identifying rumination and forgiveness as sequential mediators, the study offers a specific psychological pathway—repetitive negative thinking followed by reduced willingness to forgive—that may connect the experience of exclusion to harmful creative output in this population.

Subject of Research: The association between social exclusion and malevolent creativity mediated by rumination and forgiveness among Chinese vocational college students

Article Title: The association between social exclusion and malevolent creativity among chinese vocational college students: a chain mediation model of rumination and forgiveness

Article References: Chen, W., Chi, J., Hu, P., & Liu, Z. (2026). The association between social exclusion and malevolent creativity among chinese vocational college students: a chain mediation model of rumination and forgiveness. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05483-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05483-5

Keywords: malevolent creativity, social exclusion, rumination, forgiveness, chain mediation, vocational college students, cross-sectional survey, BMC Psychology, 6P Model, China, association, between