Effects of intellectual variables, age, and gender on divergent thinking in adulthood

Divergent thinking was assessed in 400 adult women and men with tests of wo rd association (associational fluency) and alternate uses (production fluen cy, flexibility, and originality). The participants were from four age coho rts: young (17-22 years old), middle-aged (40-50), young-old (60-70), and o ld-old (75+). The test battery also included two intellectual "process'' va riables (inductive reasoning, memory span), one "dynamic resource variable' ' (intellectual speediness), one "structural resource variable'' (vocabular y), and two moderator variables (depression, education). Hierarchical multi ple regression analyses showed that divergent thinking was significantly, l inearly, positively, and moderately related to all of these variables excep t depression, which was not significantly related to divergent thinking. Ef fects of age group and gender were assessed in analyses of variance (alpha= .01). The age groups did not differ significantly in associational fluency, but the middle-aged group was the best on production fluency, flexibility, and originality. Gender had a significant effect on only one variable: Wom en had higher depression scores than men.