“Hustle” and “get creative”. These are the two most common phrases used in the professional space these days. While there’s much to be said about the first, researchers from McGill University, Harvard University, and the University of Melbourne have come up with something very interesting for the latter.
This international cohort of researchers has devised a four-minute test that could reveal the creative potential that lies within each participant.
How do you do it? Just think of 10 “wildly unrelated” words – in definition, category, or concept – and input them on their website (linked above). The algorithms will compute the degree of divergent thinking you are able to showcase and give you a score. It will also tell you what the score means, and where you rank in terms of other participants.
But keep in mind, this test only checks a particular type of creativity – divergent thinking (the other kind being convergent thinking, which allows us to come up with the best solution taking a variety of things into consideration).
“According to Jay Olson, the creator of the Divergent Association Task, that’s just a ‘sliver’—but it’s the first step toward understanding creativity more broadly, and subsequently, how it might be cultivated in the minds of the next generation,” an article in Fast Company noted.
We tried it. It’s super quick, fun, anonymous and will definitely leave you wanting more!
