What vegetable do most people name?
Ask somebody to name a vegetable, quickly, and performers have expected the same answer for a century.
Answer it yourself first
Name a vegetable.
The first one that comes to mind. Type it.
The answer usually given
Carrot. It is the standard expectation among performers, and the answer repeated in most write-ups of the psychological force.
Unusually, that claim seems to rest on nothing published. Searching for a measurement turns up the assertion repeated in magic writing, without a survey, a sample size, or a figure attached to it. That gap is the reason this page exists rather than simply reporting the number.
And what people are actually answering here
Out of 0 answers so far. Free to quote, with the sample size beside it so a reader can judge the weight.
Once this passes 1000 answers, the measurement replaces the claim above as the headline of this page, and the claim becomes the thing being checked rather than the thing being reported. Saying that in advance is the point: a threshold decided afterwards is not a threshold.
Why a vegetable at all
It seems an odd thing to ask somebody on stage, and that is the point. A vegetable is a category anybody can answer instantly, few have rehearsed, and which seems to lack a right answer. It feels like the freest possible choice, which is what makes it useful to a performer.
The prediction is written before the question is asked, and the effect lives or dies on one number: how often the expected answer comes back.
What makes one vegetable more likely than another
Two things, and they pull the same way.
Drawability. Asked to picture a vegetable rather than list one, people reach for a distinctive silhouette. A carrot is a shape a child can draw in one stroke, and it is the one common vegetable that is not green. A parsnip is much the same vegetable in a worse costume, and it almost never comes up.
Category confusion helps too. A fair number of people answer with something botanically a fruit — tomato, cucumber, pepper — because in a kitchen those behave like vegetables. Those answers are counted here as given, because the question asked what people say rather than what a botanist would accept.
What a performer does with it
The same trade as every psychological force. Predict the common answer, show the prediction only when it is right, and let the misses disappear. Its worth depends entirely on the true rate, and the true rate is a measurement rather than a tradition.
If the leading answer takes a third of responses, that is a reliable opener. If it takes one in eight, it is a gamble that occasionally looks like genius. Both are worth knowing; only one of them is what the folklore implies.
How this is measured
- The question comes before the claim. What other people answer is printed below the panel rather than above it, on purpose — and this is not a guess about how much that matters. Kubovy and Psotka measured it: asked cold, 28.4% of their subjects said seven, and when the experimenter mentioned seven as an example first, that fell to 16.6%. Naming the popular answer before the question cuts its share nearly in half, so a study that does it is measuring suggestibility rather than choice.
- One answer per browser. Your browser generates a random token for itself and keeps it, so answering again replaces your answer rather than adding one. It is the same token as the full study, so answering in both places counts once. That token is a number your own machine made up — not an address, not a fingerprint.
- Nothing is asked of you first. No account, no email, no cookie banner. A study behind a form measures the people willing to fill in the form.
- The limits, plainly. This is a self-selected sample of people who found a card magic site, so it is not a random sample of the public, and somebody determined could push a number by clearing storage. The sample size is printed beside the results for exactly that reason.
- Free to use. Quote the numbers, with a link back so a reader can see the current count and the method.
Questions people ask
What vegetable do most people name?
Performers expect carrot, and it is one of the oldest defaults in mentalism. What is missing is a published measurement — the claim appears in magic writing and seemingly nowhere with a sample size attached.
The running count above is that measurement, with its sample size printed beside it so you can judge how much weight it carries yet.
Why do people say carrot?
Because it is easy to picture. Asked for a vegetable, people reach for a distinctive silhouette rather than working down a list, and a carrot is a shape that can be drawn in one stroke.
Color helps as well: it is the one common vegetable that is not green.
Is a tomato a vegetable?
Botanically it is a fruit, and a good number of people name it anyway when asked for a vegetable, because in a kitchen it behaves like one.
This study counts answers as given. The question was what people say, not what a botanist would accept.
More
This is one of eleven questions in the full study, which asks for a card, a number, a vegetable, a fruit, an animal and more, and shows the running counts for all of them. The rest of the site is self-working card tricks you can play in the browser.
Harrison Alley
Hobbyist · Writes Sleightless
A hobbyist, not a professional. I write up the self-working end of card magic, because it is the door I would point a beginner at, and every trainer here is played through and checked before it ships.