Cognitive Differentiation and Verbal Intelligence: Clarifying Relationships

This study principally explored the interrelationship of Crockett's (1965) Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ) measure of cognitive differentiation with various measures of verbal intelligence in order to determine the extent to which the RCQ measure is confounded by verbal ability. Participants included 285 undergraduates from a large southern university. The results show the RCQ to be independent of the verbal abilities measures. Further, a significant negative correlation in this study between differentiation and participants' intolerance of ambiguity provides some additional validation for the differentiation construct.