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Reflection puzzles test
Seven short word problems, new every sitting, each built around a quick answer that is wrong. See which you checked, which lured you, and the working for each.
In short
Each of these seven word problems is built so that a quick answer springs to mind and is wrong. The test is whether you stop to check it. The puzzles are generated fresh every sitting from original templates, so you cannot have seen them before, and the result separates checked answers from the intuitive lure each puzzle was built around.
How the test works
The seven puzzles come from seven different templates, drawn from a larger set: fence posts, pages read, cuts in a plank, flights of stairs, a rise followed by a fall, stacked discounts, round-trip speeds and averages of groups of different sizes. For each, the generator computes both the right answer and the tempting one from the same numbers, and discards any puzzle where the two are too close to tell apart. You type a number; the result says whether it was right, the lure, or something else, and shows the working.
Where the idea comes from
The idea of a puzzle whose wrong answers cluster on one intuitive response comes from Shane Frederick's 2005 paper on cognitive reflection. None of his three items is used here, and none of their structures is copied. That matters for more than copyright: his items have been reprinted so widely that many people now know them, and Stieger and Reips reported that people who had seen such items before scored higher, which is exactly what a new set every sitting avoids.
What it cannot tell you
There is no norm group behind these puzzles, so the result is a count, not a percentile or a rationality score. A lure answer means the first thought went unchecked on that puzzle; it says nothing about intelligence, and the same person often catches the trap on a second look.
Sources
- Frederick (2005), Cognitive reflection and decision making, Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Stieger and Reips (2016), A limitation of the Cognitive Reflection Test: familiarity, PeerJ
Text, questions and code on this page are original to MyTestAtlas. The cited studies describe the classic procedure; none of their items is reproduced.