Divergent thinking predicts persuasion and humour

As a gregarious species, we gain substantial benefits when we are liked by others and able to convince others of the value of our ideas. Understanding and managing others relies upon many complex cognitive processes working in unison, starting with our ability to understand facial expressions, language, and emotions, and ending with the responses we choose to deliver and strategies we elect to pursue. Some people consistently deliver responses that serve their social goals, whilst others flounder in the same waters. In this thesis I explore individual differences in the ability to respond flexibly and appropriately.The two social processes I chose to study in this thesis are humour and persuasion. Humour is a universally attractive quality, and thus a reliable way to win the favor of others. Similarly, persuading others of the value of ourselves and our ideas is the goal of many of our most important and high-stakes interactions, ranging from business deals to romantic love.I predicted that differences in the ability to be funny and persuasive would be explained by the capacity to engage in divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to generate multiple diverse solutions to problems. Logically, good divergent thinkers should be able to generate a broader range of social strategies when they decide that their current approach is unlikely to be effective, and hence should be more persuasive and humourous.I conducted a total of four studies to test this prediction. In the first study, first year psychology students provided a measure of divergent thinking and written measures of humour and persuasiveness. In the second and fourth study, university friendship groups and college residents provided a measure of divergent thinking and rated each other on humour and persuasiveness. In the third study, Ni-Vanuatu males provided similar measures of divergent thinking and peer rated social effectiveness, as well as friendship nominations I used to calculate social network popularity.Due to inconsistent results between studies, I collapsed studies one, two and four into a combined sample (N = 630) and found that divergent thinking is associated with the ability to produce persuasive written texts and, to a lesser degree, with the ability to produce humourous texts. I also found divergent thinking to be tentatively associated with peer-evaluations of humour and persuasiveness. These relationships emerged independently of measures of intelligence and personality.