Things to know while writing WAT

During Service Selection Board interview 5 day process, defence aspirants have to go through many test assessing their psychological and physical acuity. WAT short for Word Association Test is one of the psychological tests conducted on the second day of the interview process.

What is WAT

Word association means “stimulation of an associative pattern by a word”, Here Word Association Test can be termed as the spontaneous connection and production of other words in response to a given word for the psychiatric evaluation. Word Association Test can reveal a person’s subconscious mind state. It’s been noted by research that people ideas, feelings, experiences and information are connected within in the mind which bind together the behaviour of the person, a person conscious mind has the ability to mask his real behavioural traits. Word Association Test is one of the psychological techniques in which an individual’s behaviour is tested through his subconscious mind.

To simply put this test observe candidates imagination and evaluate his/her qualities of individual ideas. In this test candidate will be shown a word and he/she is required to form a meaningful sentence using that word. On seeing a word there might be different ideas in candidate’s mind related to that word but he/she must write the first spontaneous reaction in your answer sheet.

Defeat, death, disease, birth, win, etc. these words have different impact on a person’s mind, when you frame a sentence based on these words, you are expressing your inner feelings about those words.

Things to know while writing WAT

• In this round you’re flashed 60 words, each for 15 seconds in which you’ve to be done and ready for the next word to be flashed.
• Keep your sentences short and simple. Make complete sentences that don’t leave any question in the examiner’s mind later. For e.g., ‘this situation is dangerous’ for the word dangerous. You can instead write ‘mind block is a dangerous situation for writers’.
• Avoid using famous sayings or slogans. The examiner is looking for creativity and you may lose points on that.
• Evaluation is one of the major tools of mind, in Word Association Test (WAT) sentence made by candidates also show his/her evaluation strength. So, a candidate must work on his evaluation skills on day-to-day happenings it will help him/her to get in in required gear.
• Be Logical and a keen observer these traits are easily apprehended by psychologists by the candidate’s performance in Word Association Test (WAT).

Examples of WAT

1. Society: Our society consists of rich set of good customs.
2. Impossible: Proper planning can turn impossible into possible.
3. Fit: The army soldiers are trained well for their fitness.
4. Responsibility: Every citizen must fulfil his/her social, economic, religious and patriotic responsibility towards society.
5. Will: The positive will power can change bad destiny to good.
6. Mother: Mother teaches us about how to live a life the right way.
7. Respect: The people salute the national flag as a way of giving respect to the nation.
8. Challenge: challenges increase abilities.
9. Fear: winners bravely face his fear.
10. Weapon- weapon is used for protection.
11. Hijack- commandos are trained for handling hijack situation.
12. Worry- A fighter never worries about failures.
13. Sports: A part from studies one must involve in sports
14. Fortune: Fortune and hardwork makes one succeed
15. Posion: Snakes poison is used as medicine