Another Mind Trick
It’s simple enough. Try this one for yourself. Then try it out on your friends.
Ask these questions ensuring that they answer quickly.
- What is two plus four?
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What is three plus three?
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What is five plus one?
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What is two plus two plus two?
Now repeat saying the number 6 to yourself as fast as you can for 10 seconds. Then scroll down.
Now, QUICK!!
- Name a vegetable.
Did you say A CARROT?
If not….
you’re among the minority of the population whose minds are warped enough to think of something else. Most people will answer ‘carrot’ when given this exercise.
If you are interested in finding out why the popular answer is carrot, read on for the explanation.
Experiments carried out by university lecturers on students, psychologists on colleagues and teachers on pupils have shown that between 66% and 90% come up with the answer Carrot!!
Readers of the “New Scientist” are puzzling over why this should be. Random tests simply asking to name a vegetable came up with random answers. What is further intriguing is that many other answers when not carrot were orange or something orange!
Favoured hypotheses:
So why is that people say “carrot” when they are asked to name a vegetable after doing simple mental arithmetic. Here are some suggestions:
1. “Carrot” sounds like “count/counting”.
2. The series of ever increasing numbers resembles a continuously increasing shape – like a carrot – although the “equals six” experiment would seem to discount this.
3. The conceptual image of a carrot is the simplest mathematical/geometrical vegetable: a rotated triangle.
4. “Carrot” is the most common vegetable, and therefore the one that most people are likely to think of when they’re asked the question: “Name a vegetable.”
5. A “carrot” is the most distinctive vegetable because of its colour and shape, and it is what is scientifically known as a “cool” vegetable.
6. The subjects are making an association of sounds between the vowel sound “a” in the word “maths”, and the vowel sound “a” in the word “carrot”. This would seem to be very logical because the word “cabbage”, which was the second most popular choice of vegetable, also has the same vowel sound “a”.
7. There is some connection between the conceptual image of a carrot, and the geometrical shape formed by the sums. The ever-increasing series of numbers form a shape in the subjects’ mind, which resembles a pyramid-type geometrical form, which is similar to a carrot.
8. Carrots are also suggestive of a particular anatomical feature of the human body; and perhaps this is a case of the subconscious thought being expressed without censorship.
July 28 2008 04:10 pm | Miscellaneous