The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the degree to which tests of divergent production (DP) may be confounded by verbal ability and loquacity and (b) relationships among divergent thinking, social competency, and the syntactic complexity of prose written by subjects. Subjects were 61 fifth-and sixth-grade pupils who completed a battery of tests and wrote stories on an assigned topic. Their teachers evaluated them for social competency and for creative behavior. Even after controlling for verbal ability and loquacity, the DP tests appeared to measure a common, coherent set of abilities. Verbal rather than figural DP tests appeared to have relevance to social behavior. An association between complex thinking and the tendency to write in a relatively simple style suggested that complex thinkers may have (intuitively) appreciated the value of simplicity in facilitating communication.
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