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Think of the number six. Now - name a vegetable!

It is claimed that people, when asked for a random vegetable, will typically pick the same one.

(Spoiler below. Once you have guessed, click or hover over the box below.)

carrot

Claim examples:

  • This online exercise claims 98% do, when primed with the word "six".
  • WikiHow claims 90% carrot, 2% broccoli as second choice, and then, confusingly, 8% lettuce as third - again when primed with "six".
  • This redditor says, anecdotally, 90%, when prepared with random arithmetic questions.
  • This blogger got 7 out of 7 carrots, after using an arithmetic question.
  • This contributor to ScienceChatForum did a controlled experiment to show neither the "six" priming nor arithmetic questions were necessary, with a 92% of 60 runs answering carrot.
  • These magic trick instructions claim people normally choose carrot, and don't use arithmetic nor make a claim about frequency.

Is this phenomenon true? If so, what is the scientific explanation?

Disclosure: It worked for me. I'm among the 98% majority according to the first site.

Oddthinking
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Green Noob
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    I have heard this fact before, and used it in childish magic tricks. The priming with "six" is not required. It didn't work with me here, because I knew what was expected of me, and was sure to choose another. – Oddthinking Feb 11 '12 at 11:22
  • @Oliver_C It would have been better if you avoided using the name of the vegetable in your comment. – Green Noob Feb 11 '12 at 11:30
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    @Green Noob - Agreed... Corrected. I suspect a [Kiki/Bouba-effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect). "Six" has a sharp sound. – Oliver_C Feb 11 '12 at 11:34
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    I wish you'd mentioned six in the title, I immediately thought of "asparagus". Now I'll never know what I'd have thought of if I'd had that primer :( – Jivlain Feb 11 '12 at 15:40
  • @Jivlain You are free to edit the question to your liking :) – Green Noob Feb 11 '12 at 15:56
  • Let's avoid spoilers, they are just annoying. You are not spoiling anything by being clear (which is what this site is about) – Sklivvz Feb 11 '12 at 20:06
  • @Jivlain, the priming with "six" is a red herring. I've added many more claims to show they don't all involve the number 6. I've taken it out of the question title, so we can answer the general question rather than the unnecessarily specific one. (Of course, better still would be an answer that covered all of the "everyone always answers X when asked for a random Y" phenomena.) – Oddthinking Feb 11 '12 at 23:49
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    if it were true, it would hardly be random :) – jwenting Feb 12 '12 at 07:42
  • @jwenting Agreed. +1 – Green Noob Feb 12 '12 at 15:08
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    @Sklivvz I disagree. For a question like this, I think it would be fair to allow users to have an unbiased shot at the test so that they could verify the effect (if any) by themselves. – Green Noob Feb 12 '12 at 15:47
  • @GreenNoob actually, the spoiler would bias them based on their answer, whereas just being told the facts makes them neutral on the subject. As an OP we much prefer if you can pose your question with little bias as not to guide the community. – Sklivvz Feb 12 '12 at 16:29
  • So what happens to all those people who have ever heard/read about this anecdote when they are confronted with the question? Once that group is large enough you are measuring either A) if they have been primed, and B) how they *want* to respond (purposefully saying carrot or not in order to skew the results). In any of those claims, have the followup questions been 1) Did you know this anecdote, and 2) Why did you answer X? –  Jun 23 '16 at 14:54
  • Yikes. Why did I think of a carrot. lmao – Insane Jun 25 '16 at 21:55

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