Have you ever wondered if your mind was normal?

what the hell…it even got me, i don’t know why…

wow. I should have seen that coming, but it got me too

Define “normal”...?

Wow! That is way weird. it was the first thing that popped into my head! I wonder why that is?

Yes it must have something to do with distracting you with the number .
Would be good to know why it works that way .

Defining normal might be difficult. One approach is relying on medical diagnostics. According to that most weird people are actually very normal.

I did NOT get the right answer.

Neither did I.

holy crap! I said carrot! very strange…

I said celery.

I said potato

I said cucumber.

I said cucumber too

I said sweet potato.

I said green beans. I’ve always said green beans to this trick. they aren’t even my favorite!

i said butternut squash

Power of suggestion.

Use of the word “arrow” in the spot of the formula that was previously occupied by “scroll” suggests it compellingly by sound. We would never use “arrow” as a verb in this way. Even though it is not what grabs our focus because of the “Quick,” the caps, and the imperative, it is prominent in the context and striking because it is anomalous.

Structure of the exercise also suggests something long and vertical.

I have seen this one in e-mail, but here even the color of the background is suggestive. Plenty of subtle cues to point us in a certain direction.

Carrots are among the most common vegetables, and very often pictured in any illustration of vegetables. They’d be a likely contender even without all the prompts. So the prompts just have to narrow the field out of maybe five or six and not out of hundreds.

Does a compulsion to analyze and explain this make me normal?

I thought of celery too.

I wonder how many people lied about the vegetable they said on the questionnaire.

Or maybe not lied…but “chose” a different answer from the first thing that sprang to mind. The real test was what was the first thing that sprang to mind.

@Jeruba – I agree w/ you. Like I said, and the wording was there, I’ve said green bean every time I’ve seen this – one thing I need to add- my husband had told me about the test before I ever took it.

I think was already moving onto another choice, because I knew the trick.

So—you resisted “carrot,” @cak?

@RandomMrdan: Why would anyone lie about it?

@Jeruba: Well, the first thing I thought of was tomato, but then I thought Wait, that’s a fruit, not a vegetable. I thought that was the trick, and when I got to the bottom it was going to say “Ha ha, you thought of tomato, didn’t you?” so I quickly changed it to celery.

YOU could have had a V8!

I have wondered that many a time.

@petethepothead some people might feel belittled to think they are “normal” and instead would rather want to have everyone think they are “different”. So far it seems there are a lot more than 2% of people here that have said something other than “Carrot”.

I guess maybe we do have a lot of different people here though, but I instinctively thought Carrot.

@Jeruba – Not purposefully, no. I’ve done it many times. It didn’t even occur to pick carrot, but as soon as picked something, I was thinking carrot. You know after you’ve done something so many times, you may pick something, but immediately think of something else. It’s almost like I’ve done this enough to know to pick something else, but carrot is right behind that choice – if they could be picked at the same time, they would.

This little mind trick has been around for a little while now, I can’t imagine that I could truly said that somewhere, there wasn’t some subconscious through progress going on.