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Recently my wife had me read a forward she received in her email inbox. It was one of those gags that makes its way around cyber space every once in a while. First you had to calculate a series of simple math additions with no indication of why, or where it was leading. After five or six of those you had to quickly name a color and a tool.
"Quick, quick" my wife prompted.
I nodded, "Red Hammer."
Her eyes widened, and she said something like "How does that work?! I mean, I thought of a brown hammer, but still!"
The answer is fairly simple, but I did some quick web research just to confirm my suspicions. One website I found explains that the series of math problems serve as misdirection. They make your brain think of something other than what you will ultimately be asked to respond to. That misdirection coupled with the urgency in the final question, "quick, name a color and a tool," pretty much prevents you from actually thinking of anything specific and you will likely respond with the most common answers, which happen to be red, and hammer.
I would venture a guess that the next most common color thought of might be blue and the next most common tool a saw. But my wife thought brown, which just means she may have had that color in her mind from something she was doing previously, or she didn't respond as quickly as I did, giving her brain enough time to actually pick a color.
This is a perfect example of how easily the human mind can be misled, and how amazed we may be if we don't think rationally about the result. It's pretty neat, but nothing magical or mysterious.
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