Test · Thinking

Creativity Test

Not a talent test and not a grade. Twenty quiet questions about what you make, try and show, and a reading of where creativity lives in your days right now.

≈4 min Questions: 20

A jay perched on a weathered potting-shed bench among clay pots, seedlings, acorns and an old lantern, next to a tiny sculpture of a stone and an acorn

You know that feeling when a small idea turns up, a different way to fix a hinge or a line for a song, and you can’t tell whether it counts for anything? This test does not decide whether you are a creative person or how good your ideas are. It looks at how creativity shows up in your life right now: what you try, what you finish, how far it travels. Choose the answer that feels closest to you at the moment, and at the end you get a short reading. It takes about four minutes. What might you notice if you looked at your own days kindly?

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A jar lid refuses to budge, and you already know one trick that would work. What happens with the idea of a second trick?
The way a choir hands a melody from one voice to the next reminds you of how a market runs. When do links like that reach you?
A small idea drifts by: a bridge made of teacups, a clock with thirteen hours. Does it get any of your time?
A wobbly table stops wobbling once you wedge a folded card under one leg. How final does that fix feel?
A latch on a gate, a spring inside a pen: you have no need to know how they work. What does your curiosity do?
A reliable recipe sits on the counter for tonight's dinner. Where does your hand go?
A task has a quick version and a longer, messier one. Which pulls at you?
A lane you have never tried runs off the main road to a friend's house. The main road is known and safe. Which way do you go?
Something around the house is a little awkward. Does a fix of your own turn up?
You are reading about how a city got its water supply, and the book explains it in one clear way. How does your own angle come into it?
Lines of a poem or a scrap of melody arrive uninvited. Do you do anything with them?
You need a gadget for a small job around the house. Do you build something of your own?
A pile of colored pens and paper sits on a table at a gathering, inviting anyone to doodle or design a card. What do you do?
You have made something for yourself: a song, a sketch, a little story. What happens to it?
Has something you made ever ended up with a club, a forum or a friend of a friend, people who don't know you?
A poem or a tune sits in a drawer. Is there ever a moment when you wonder whether to show it?
A local open call is announced, and something you made would fit it. Do you put it forward?
You start a small project of your own: something knitted, written, built or painted. How far does it get?
You have finished and shown something of your own before. What about the next piece?
A project of yours sits unfinished, or finished and unseen. How did it end up there?

Maryna Lyadneva psychologist

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How this test works

Where the questions come from, what the scale rests on, and why the result is not a diagnosis.

Self-reported creative behavior in everyday life: how ideas show up, how open a person is to curiosity and the unconventional, in how many areas creativity appears, and how far the results get finished, shown and taken up.

Author Maryna Lyadneva

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Methodology

The questions describe scenes from ordinary life. They ask how ideas show up, such as finding a second way or an unexpected link, how curious and at ease a person is with the unconventional, how many areas of life they create in, and how far what they make travels, from staying private to reaching people well beyond the circle. A last group looks at whether personal projects reach the end and get shown. The approach follows validated questionnaires on everyday creative behavior and achievement.

This is a report on what a person does, and no idea is scored. Classic creativity tests work differently: they set a task and rate the ideas that come out of it. Self-report and such tasks agree only weakly to moderately, which is why the result speaks about behavior and nothing more. Ability, talent, IQ-style potential, giftedness and future success all lie outside its scope. In pooled research, intelligence and creativity are linked only weakly, and the link changes with the part of creativity being measured. A definition of the term appears in a psychology dictionary entry on creativity. Because answers come from the person's own view, they give a snapshot, not a full picture.

The test is not a diagnostic instrument and does not replace a specialist. It is a self-report of creative behavior, not an idea task or a rating of talent, and the result describes the present, not the quality of ideas or what follows.

Questions

Is this the kind of test where you list all the uses for a brick?

Not quite. Brick-style tasks grade how inventive your answers are, and this format has no way to run them. Here you describe what you actually do, following a different, well-tested tradition of questionnaires. Describing your habits and being graded on your ideas are different things, and studies find only a modest link between them.

Does being smart make you more creative?

Only slightly. When studies are pooled, the tie between intelligence and creativity comes out weak, and closer looks show it shifts depending on whether you count how many ideas someone produces or how good their best ones are. There is no cutoff past which creativity switches on.

Do you have to make traditional art to count as creative?

No. Making things, fixing them, writing, arranging ideas and solving daily puzzles all count here, and a quiet visual side does not pull the result down by itself.

Is creativity something you're born with, or can it be practiced?

The test cannot say where creativity comes from. It asks about what shows up in your life: whether ideas get played with, whether things get finished and shown. Those habits move with how you live, so the result is a picture of now rather than a fixed score. Reports of behavior and measured ability sit only loosely together, so it would be a stretch to read more into it.

Does this test tell you what kind of creative person you are?

No, and that is by design. The result is one overall picture of how much creative behavior is in your life at the moment. Making, building, writing and everyday problem-solving are added together, so no label such as maker or writer comes out.

Sources
  1. Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1–12. doi:10.1037/a0013688
  2. Kaufman, J. C. (2012). Counting the muses: Development of the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS). Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(4), 298–308. doi:10.1037/a0029751
  3. Carson, S., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2005). Reliability, Validity, and Factor Structure of the Creative Achievement Questionnaire. Creativity Research Journal, 17(1), 37–50. doi:10.1207/s15326934crj1701_4
  4. Runco, M. A., Plucker, J. A., & Lim, W. (2001). Development and psychometric integrity of a measure of ideational behavior. Creativity Research Journal, 13(3–4), 393–400. doi:10.1207/S15326934CRJ1334_16