Thinking Style
Analytical, intuitive, creative or practical?
Free, no account needed.
People approach problems in different ways. Some break them into parts, some trust a hunch, some look for a surprising angle and some simply start building. This test measures those four preferences, and it adds six short puzzles that test something different: whether you pause to check an answer that feels obviously right.
Rate the statements by how well they describe you. For the puzzles there is no time limit: take as long as you like, but do not use a calculator or look anything up. The puzzles feed one score, cognitive reflection; everything else is about style, not ability.
What it measures
Analytical
Preferring logic, evidence and step-by-step reasoning; breaking problems into parts.
Low: Long chains of formal reasoning are not your natural way into a problem.
High: You like to lay out the evidence, follow the logic and test each step.
Intuitive
Trusting fast impressions, gut feelings and a sense of the whole before the details.
Low: You set hunches aside until you can back them up.
High: You trust your first impressions and often know the answer before you can explain it.
Creative
Seeking original ideas, unusual combinations and new ways of doing things.
Low: You prefer proven methods and improving what exists to inventing from scratch.
High: You enjoy generating new ideas and looking at problems from unexpected angles.
Practical
Judging ideas by whether they work, and preferring hands-on, concrete problem-solving.
Low: You enjoy ideas for their own sake, whether or not they will ever be used.
High: You want ideas to work in real life, and you learn best by doing.
Cognitive reflection
How many of six puzzles you solved. Each has a tempting first answer that is wrong, so this measures whether you paused to check, not a preference.
Low: In puzzles built to mislead, your quick first answers carried the day.
High: You paused, checked your first impression and found the right answer.
Possible results
About this test
Two research traditions meet in this test. The first is dual-process theory, popularized by Daniel Kahneman as System 1 (fast, intuitive, effortless) and System 2 (slow, deliberate, analytical). Seymour Epstein's cognitive-experiential self-theory showed that a preference for rational thinking and a preference for experiential, intuitive thinking are not opposites: many people score high or low on both. The second is Robert Sternberg's theory of successful intelligence, which distinguishes analytical, creative and practical abilities. Here these become four self-reported preferences: analytical (logic, evidence, step-by-step reasoning), intuitive (trusting fast impressions and gut feelings), creative (seeking novel ideas and combinations) and practical (judging ideas by what works and learning by doing).
The fifth score measures performance, not preference. In 2005 Shane Frederick published the Cognitive Reflection Test, three short puzzles whose first answer springs to mind at once and is wrong. Solving them requires noticing and overriding that impulse, and scores predict resistance to several reasoning biases. This test uses six new puzzles in the same spirit.
Your result is the profile closest to your scores. Caveats: style scores are self-descriptions, relative to the range of possible answers and not to population norms; six puzzles are a small sample, and people who have met similar puzzles before have an advantage; cognitive reflection is related to, but not the same as, intelligence. A strong intuitive style is not a weakness either: intuition built on long experience is often fast and accurate. The skill is knowing when to trust it.
References
- Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25-42.
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.
- Epstein, S., Pacini, R., Denes-Raj, V. & Heier, H. (1996). Individual differences in intuitive-experiential and analytical-rational thinking styles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 390-405.
- Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life.
- Toplak, M. E., West, R. F. & Stanovich, K. E. (2011). The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. Memory & Cognition, 39, 1275-1289.
For self-reflection and curiosity, not diagnosis. Scores describe how you answered, relative to the possible range; they are not compared with population norms.
Thinking Style
About 5 minutes · 34 questions
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