Measures of Creativity

Interpretation of Results

Interpretation of your test results might surprise you. If you are like most of us, many of your ideas centered on using the tin can as a container of some sort (a coffee cup, a place to store coins, etc.). None of those ideas should be included in your originality score. They are just variations on what the tin-can can do in its normal use. While they are potential uses of our tin can, they are not original concepts. We often find that none of our ideas is completely original, or at best, we might have one or two original ideas. It’s shocking, actually.
What we are most interested in is our originality score, and in particular, the percentage of our ideas in the originality category compared to the overall number of ideas we generated. The typical score for all of us grownups in the originality category is very, very low. It’s because we’ve been conditioned to think in certain ways. Don’t despair. It’s what we almost always find for adults. (If you want to really have some fun, have your kids take the same test. It’s likely their originality score will be much higher than yours.)