What is RAT – The Remote Association Test as noted in the nonfiction book, Thinking, Fast and Slow?

In 1960, psychologist Sarnoff Mednick uncovered what he believed to be the essence of creativity. His theory was that creativity is merely associative memory that works extremely well. Mednick developed a test, the Remote Association Test, (RAT) which is still used in studies of creativity. Part of the test was to present series of three ostensibly unrelated words to a subject. Their creativity was measured by the links they were able to make between the words. Later, German psychologists used the RAT in their work with cognitive ease.