Cultural Availability: An Associative Characteristic of Remote Associates Test Items

It was demonstrated that difficulty of RAT items is related to the cultural availability of correct RAT item response to the stimulus triads composing the RAT. The more frequently missed RAT items are those items to which the correct response is not a culturally dominant associate of the particular RAT stimulus words in question. Interest in the RAT, not as a measure of creativity, but as an object of psychological value in its own right was stressed.