Widow, bite, monkey.

Spider.

Spider.

Yep.

So this is the remote associations test.

It measures your ability to see relationships between things that are only remotely associated.

This is Michael from "Vsauce 1," and this is Jake from "Vsauce 3."

Hello.

Basically, I say three words.

And then you reply with a fourth word that links everything together.

So for example-- OK, good.

Mouse, blue, sharp.

Danger.

You almost said it.

I did?

Yeah.

Cheese.

Is there a right or wrong answer?

Oh, gosh, danger works.

I mean, I was looking for cheese.

So your response is semantically related to those three stimulus words.

Bald, screech, emblem.

Saved by the bell.

Eagle.

Yes.

Chamber, staff, box.

Maid.

Uh, maid.

Music?

Oh, it's music, like chamber music.

I was thinking chamber maid.

So the why that your brain works when you work these out is that you think of the first word, and you kind of cycle through all of the options for that.

And then you go to the second, and then you go to the third.

And then you kind of line up which ones are consistent.

So there is a right answer.

This is like a Rorschach, where you're like, what does it say that you think danger is associated with mice.

So this is a creativity test.

It's called a creativity test.

But it measures convergent thinking and not divergent thinking.

Oh, interesting.

So you need to find-- What makes it creative, if it's convergent.

If everyone has the same answer, you're all being creative.

It's a good point, in that you need to find something that best fits all of these things.

So I mean, the answer to the first one was cheese.

But you said danger, still works.

Sore, shoulder, sweat.

I was going to say blade.

But with that sweat curveball-- And not sore as in a tool that you cut something with.

Saw like in I saw.

No, no.

Sore as in S-O-R-E. Sore.

Sore.

Sore.

Wow, this changes everything.

Cold.

It is cold.

Well, the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Test is a divergent thinking test, so out-of-the-box thinking.

There are no set answers for anything.

OK. And it was created because Wallach and Kogan thought that standardized testing wasn't conducive to creative thinking.

And you need to come up with as many items as possible that fit a specific component.

Name all the things with wheels that you can think of.

Cars, bikes, tricycles.

Wheelbarrow, Heelys, electric skateboard, normal skateboard, carriages.

Skateboards, roller skates, roller blades.

Cheese, large wheels of cheese.

So that's great, because you're gone into a different category.

So the way that these tests are scored, they take into account, like, transportation is one category, right.

And then you're more creative if you going into, say, food, which a different category.

I think like a machine might have wheels.

Yes, that is so good that you said that.

Because you've moved into a new category.

You were all transportation.

When you do walk the dog with a yo-yo, it's like a wheel.

I would be an answer to that because I'm wheel-y smart.

Name all the ways that a cat and a mouse are similar.

They're both mammals.

They have fur.

They're animals.

They can die.

They're furry, for the most part.

Warm blooded, they give birth to live babies.

They have white and red blood cells.

They have tails.

They breathe oxygen.

They are things that I'm not particularly fond of.

They-- do they give milk?

Do mice give help to their kids?

I'm sure.

They're mammals.

Yeah, mouse milk is a thing.

Mouse milk is a thing.

Meh, yeah, no, neither would survive being shot out of a cannon.

Would either survive a fall-out?

Actually, a mouse probably would.

A cat would be like, meh.

They also have less than 10 letters in their name.

They also are smaller than planets.

Oh, they both like lasagna, cheese.

So the Torrance tests of creative thinking is a group of test that is the most widely used in testing creative potential.

All right.

So these are a few subtests.

It's used in 75% of creativity tests with kids and about 40% of those with adults.

All right.

What could this be?

It could be a star.

It could be a clock with way too many hands.

Or it could be a quasar.

It looks kind of like the quasar map that's on the Pioneer Spaceship golden plate.

It does.

It could be a little butterfly, with his wings there, his little-- sticking out on top.

Proboscis?

You know, I mean, I thought this was a PG show.

I wasn't going to say that.

Some kind of geometric solid as viewed from the top, but like you didn't finish those lines.

An unfinished shape.

Sure, yeah.

I just have a feeling that this is going to make me feel like I'm not creative.

Like, how do you know?

What's the judge?

So what is-- It's like, oh, you're creative.

So the most interesting thing for me about all of these tests is that they were all developed in the '60s or even the '50s.

And there's so many of them since then, we still use them.

Like, the Torrance test is still the most widely used.

We haven't found one that is like the grand test of creativity.

And also, you still need to use multiple tests, because there's not one type of creativity.

You can measure creativity in a lot of different ways.

And you can't really say that one is a lot more reliable than all the others.

How could you make this object more fun?

All right, well, I mean, one obvious answer is that it could make noise.

If it talked?

I think its eyes could be bigger.

Remember, OK, do you remember the movie, "Toy Story," there's the doll head that also has like the weird connect legs moving?

If that had that.

It could also be more fun if its colors were less neutral.

It could have more glitter.

So glitter on the eyes, glitter on his body.

If it had glitter, sparkles.

You could put the video game, "Doom" inside of it.

[laughter] The camera person just said something like, oh, what if it flew.

And I'm like, no.

Because then it's like a mechanical thing.

It breaks, you've got to get batteries.

You know, if it actually flew and could carry me off-- Like a dragon.

--away from this video.

If schools were abolished, what would you do to try and get an education?

YouTube.com/vsauce1, 2, or 3.

Or BrainCraft.

Libraries, definitely.

And talking to old people.

Yeah, I mean I think the internet would be the way to do it.

Or just go at in the world and actually do what we used to do, which was trial and error.

Like, oh, these mushrooms look delicious.

Aw, now I'm dead.

Now the next person knows not to eat those mushrooms.

Sure.

They've already lived and done so many things.

And back before we had even written language, it was the old people that would tell you, oh my gosh, I saw the ocean do that once.

There's a tsunami coming.

And you're like, I'm so glad you exist.

I can't wait for Wikipedia though.

So the way the divergent thinking tests are measured is kind of similar.

So there was this psychologist in the '50s whose name was Guilford.

And he was kind of a pioneer in creative thinking tests.

And he introduced four elements, to kind of measure them.

One was flexibility, which I mentioned, which is the number of different categories that you can come up with answers to, like transportation or food or thinking or whatever else, if you're talking about a wheel.

Another one is fluency, which is just the number of answers that you have.

So I would go and total up your answers and then total up Michael's and, like, everyone else.

And I could hypothetically give you a score.

Another one is originality, so each response compared to the total responses from all the numbers of people.

So if you gave one response and like 90% of the other people gave it, it's not very original.

And the last one is the elaboration, which is the amount of detail that you give.

So you gave a good one when you said, yo-yo, walking the dog with yo-yo.

So that's elaborating a lot.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah, thank you so much.

My pleasure.

This was really fun.

Thank you?

Are we going to shake on it?

Let's shake hands.

Thank you, very much, Vsauce 3.

Thank you, thanks for having me.