A Methodological Study of the Use of “Aha!” Ratings in Research on Insight Problem Solving and Creativity

Creativity is often associated with people experiencing sudden flashes of inspiration and understanding. These type of experiences have been called insights or “Aha!” moments. “Aha!” moments or insightful solutions are often described as answers that suddenly appear in the mind, with little effort, and extreme confidence that the answer is correct. This can be contrasted with incremental or analytically solved problems where solutions are reached through effortful, deliberate, and strategically application of prior knowledge. Researchers have often used subjective ratings of participants’ own “Aha!” experiences to differentiate between insightful and incrementally solved problems. In the current study we investigated the construct validity of these Aha! ratings, by presenting participants with the three different aspects of the “Aha!” rating (Suddenness, Effort, and Confidence) as separate measures to see if these aspect of the solving experience were highly correlated