Test · Thinking

Remote Associates Test

A quiet look at how answers reach you, in steps you can retrace or in one piece. Both are ordinary ways to get there.

≈3 min Questions: 14

A great spotted woodpecker clinging to the trunk of an old apple tree in a sunlit orchard, with a wooden fence, windfall apples and a stone wall behind

Know that feeling when an answer turns up whole and you can’t say where it came from? Or the opposite one, when you can name every step that got you there? If you’re here, you may be curious how solutions reach you. This isn’t a quiz with right and wrong answers, and it doesn’t sort anyone into good or bad: it shows how this works for you. For each everyday situation, choose what is closest to you now. It takes about three minutes, and at the end you get a short portrait of the way you tend to arrive at answers. Which way does it come for you?

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You are alone with a tricky bit of arithmetic, such as how long a stock of supplies will last. Nobody is waiting on the answer and nothing depends on it. At some point the whole answer lands at once, and you feel certain it is right. What brings that moment on?
A bag will not zip. Everything you need is already inside, packed in one order. When do you tip it all out and repack in a different way?
A lamp that worked this morning stays dark. The plug, the bulb, the switch and the socket could each be tested alone. When does the cause simply click for you instead?
A receipt is in your hand and the total looks about right. Every item is printed there and nothing is hidden. When do you go down the list line by line?
A free afternoon, a dozen things you could do, nobody else to fit in. At some point the whole afternoon arranges itself in your head, each thing in its place. What brings that on?
Two answers to two small problems. One flashed up whole, the other came from careful work, and both are right. When does the flash feel distinctly better to you?
A bookshelf from a flat-pack box is half built and step six will not go together. Everything so far followed the instructions. When do you stop repeating the steps and try another way?
Someone's directions are fresh in your head: left at the bakery, second right, past the pharmacy. Partway there, a gap through a parking lot looks obviously quicker. When do you stick to the directions exactly?
A friend has asked for help with something personal and is talking it through. All you have is their telling of it. When does it suddenly make sense what is really going on?
You and another person keep circling the same disagreement and getting nowhere. When do you drop your point and come at it from a different side?
A drawer of charging cables has knotted itself into one mass. Nobody has told you how to tackle it, and one cable end already pokes out, ready to be pulled. When do you work through the knot one piece at a time, in an order of your own?
A loaf you baked by the recipe comes out as dense as a brick. Nothing points to one culprit. It is just a run of steps that ended badly. When does the reason hit you all at once?
You are in a board game against a rival. The rules are fixed and the result is contested. In one moment the winning move shows itself, with no working through each reply. When does that happen?
A printed list of steps for setting up a new phone sits beside you. Partway through, the screen already looks ready. When do you still follow the list exactly, ticking off every step?

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.

A self-report of how solutions to everyday problems tend to arrive, as a visible step-by-step path or as a sudden whole, and how readily the angle on a stuck problem is changed.

Author Maryna Lyadneva

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Methodology

The test is a self-report, a look at habits rather than skills. Its name refers to the Remote Associates Test, a classic task in which three words are given and a fourth has to be found. Nothing of the kind appears here. No answer is recalled, no answer is marked correct, and the original items cannot honestly be reproduced in this format. The test is also no gauge of creativity, intelligence or IQ. A person's own account of how they reach answers and their actual success at solving problems have been found to come apart.

The questions explore two things. One is whether solutions in everyday life tend to be assembled in visible steps or to appear whole, with the route behind them blurry, the experience usually called insight. The other is how willing a person is to look from a new angle when stuck, instead of repeating the same move.

Neither end of the scale is better. Building an answer step by step and landing on it whole are both ordinary ways to get somewhere. The result reflects a habit as described by the person answering. It is not a timed performance and not a measure of ability.

This is not a diagnostic instrument and does not replace a conversation with a specialist. How good the resulting decisions are lies outside what it describes.

Questions

Is this the test where you're given three words and have to find a fourth?

No. No words are handed to you here, and nothing has to be recalled. The classic three-word items are not reused or recreated, and there is no single correct word that could be scored. Instead you describe how solutions to everyday problems tend to reach you.

Is a sudden answer better than one built step by step?

Neither. Assembling an answer from visible steps and landing on it whole are both ordinary ways to get somewhere, and the test ranks neither. Each result names what its way offers and what it costs.

Does my result mean I'm creative or smart?

No. A result describes how answers come to you, so it has no view on how creative or intelligent you are. Even with the classic task, what people report about their own approach and how they actually perform are known to drift apart.

Is this the same as an IQ test?

No. Nothing here is marked right or wrong, and no answer is judged for being correct. The test makes no diagnostic or IQ claims. It offers a description of a habit.

Does it have as many questions as the original test?

The large item counts you may see quoted elsewhere describe the original word task. This is a separate, shorter self-report that asks a different question.

Sources
  1. Mednick, S. A. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69(3), 220–232.
  2. Ovington, L. A., Saliba, A. J., & Goldring, J. (2016). Dispositional Insight Scale: Development and validation of a tool that measures propensity toward insight in problem solving. Creativity Research Journal, 28(3), 342–347. doi:10.1080/10400419.2016.1195641
  3. Cunningham, J. B., & MacGregor, J. N. (2019). A self-report measure of productive thinking in solving insight problems. Journal of Creative Behavior, 53(1), 97–108. doi:10.1002/jocb.169