Divergent thinking and personality in young adolescents : a critical analysis

This thesis explored the relationship between two divergent thinking variables, originality and fluency, and three personality variables, extraversion, neuroticism, and tendency to dissimulate (a Lie Scale). Divergent thinking was measured by adaptations of the Uses Test (c.f. Wilson, Guilford and Christensen, 1953), and the three personality variables were measured by the New Junior Maudsley Inventory (Furneaux and Gibson, 1966). Testing was conducted on three groups of adolescent children, one sample of 44 boys, one of 43 girls, and one of 68 girls. There were no significant relationships between the divergent thinking variables and extraversion or neuroticism when each of the three samples were examined under untimed conditions of divergent thinking testing. Tendency to dissimulate was significantly and positively related to divergent thinking in the sample of 43 girls. However, when 34 girls from this group were re-tested fourteen months after initial testing, the tendency to dissimulate divergent thinking relationship was not present, and the measures of both tendency to dissimulate and extraversion showed relatively low test-retest reliability coefficients. It was considered possible that failure to demonstrate divergent thinking-extraversion relationships may have been due to the testing of divergent thinking under untimed conditions, since extraverts show less persistence and greater speed of performance than introverts (Eysenck, 1967). To explore this possibility the group of 68 girls was tested for divergent thinking under timed as well as untimed conditions. In this study no significant divergent thinking-personality relationships were established. In a critical consideration of the results it was suggested that other research approaches could be more productive in the study of divergent thinking. In particular, divergent thinking might be seen as a skill, as a situation specific behaviour, or as related to the adoption of a role. Experimental study of individual cases was suggested as a possible method for investigating the phenomenon of divergent thinking.