I’ve always enjoyed the psychological force of a carrot over the other forces Banachek has written about. The carrot force in its basic form is described in his Psychological Subtleties 1. What I’ve always liked about it in particular is that a carrot does not appear to be the classic archetype of a vegetable.
What I mean by this is that even in hindsight a carrot doesn’t seem to be the obvious choice for a vegetable. For instance, a rose for “name a long-stemmed flower” is obvious. As for vegetables, they are heavily associated with the color green, and most people would probably imagine lettuce or spinach being the primary choices. Yet when asked to think of a vegetable, carrot pops up over and over again. It’s extremely psychologically potent.
The reason why the carrot force is so potent? I’m not too sure. I tried to do some digging on the subject.
The Basics
I decided to do a surface-level Google and found links to Wikihow and the BBC. The BBC article is an interesting read in its own right. The carrot force seemed to be a little internet phenomenon for a while. There are many videos of people performing it for their friends and family. My guess as to why it got trendy? I think it was because the randomness of carrot being named over and over was funny, and people wanted to try out the “phenomenon” themselves at home.
You can search “name a vegetable” on Facebook, TikTok and others to see. If the array of videos of laymen doing the carrot force successfully won’t inspire you to try out the force, nothing will. People will obviously not upload their failures, so it’s not exactly scientific proof that the force works. What it does help show however, is how fun it can be.
Something that most of the performances on social media include is some weird quick-firing of simple math questions before they ask the person to name a vegetable. I guess this was to prime people to reply quick and fast. More or less, most videos included something along the lines of:
“Quick! Quick! What’s 1+1? What’s 4+4? What’s 4×4? What’s 2+2? Name a vegetable…”
It doesn’t take Andy Nyman to know that asking “what’s 1+1?” isn’t the most riveting hook or thematic introduction in the world, so let’s fix this. What we do want to keep, is the priming of the person to think fast and reply quickly.
What I personally do is have the person clear their mind and take a deep breath. Once they do, I speak slowly and say:
“Okay, clear your mind. In a moment, I’m going to ask you something. In fact, say the first vegetable that comes to mind.”
Using “say” rather than “think” rushes them a bit more. I tell them that I will ask them something in a moment, but then I suddenly ask them to say something right after. This is something that will catch people off guard, and get them to hurry a bit more. A different way to present the forcing script can be found in Banachek’s Psychological Subtleties 3, under the name “Carrot Top” by Robert Domenech. The script contains similar elements to the presentational tip I shared above, it has a slow pace at first, then suddenly rushes the person to think of something.
The Tomato Problem
As you may know, tomato is the second most likely vegetable to be named. This was originally written about by Fabien Baussian in Banachek’s Psychological Subtleties 1.
If the tomato is named, I give myself a second chance by saying “Some people would call a tomato a fruit. You know, that whole debate about it having seeds or something. If you were to name the next vegetable that comes to mind what would it be?”
On many occasions this has brought me back to carrot, and saved the day. No one has ever doubted or questioned this follow up, with one exception. When I was telling Jerry about this, he said “Vegetable is a meaningless term scientifically, you could call a blueberry a vegetable if you want, it’s a culinary term. I’m sure you’ve gotten away with it plenty but somebody might call you out at some point.”
This discrepancy is definitely worth knowing about but trust me, this will cause you no issue. All you’re bringing up is that there is a contention as to whether a tomato counts as a vegetable. After all, “vegetable” is a category you brought up.
Eggplant Is the New Broccoli
Banachek discovered in the ’90s that broccoli was also a popular choice of named vegetable for a time. In Psychological Subtleties 1, he hypothesized a cultural link to George Bush Sr.’s open distaste for broccoli.
I believe I have found a similar cultural link that applies to young people today. It seems that the next most commonly named vegetable after tomato is eggplant. I’ve performed this force approximately a couple hundred times. Eggplant has come up a significant number of times, maybe 25-30.
Anne pointed out that eggplant could come up more often due to the popularity of the emoji being used as shorthand for a penis. This is congruent with my findings, as the people who have named eggplant in my performances have all been young people.
When I was doing this psychological force testing, I was living in North America. The location may be of importance regarding the accuracy of this observation. People who are in different cultures and speak different languages may find different results. Nonetheless, it won’t hurt for you to carry an out that you won’t show unless it comes up.
The most basic way I’d do this is with a quiver pouch. On the side of the purse they can open themselves, put the billet with a drawing of a carrot. On the side you have to open up, put the eggplant billet, since tomato is dismissed. That way, you can start by handing them the purse. If they name carrot (which will happen most of the time), they can open up the purse they’ve been holding since before they named the vegetable. If they say eggplant, you have to take the purse back to open it. It is weaker than them opening the purse themselves, but you’ve still saved yourself!
What I used to do is carry an “eggplant” billet in my phone case, folded and hidden behind my phone. When they would name eggplant, I’d give them my phone and ham up how amazing it would be if my wallpaper were to be an eggplant. Of course, it wouldn’t be. I would immediately dismiss it by saying something like “No, even if it was an eggplant you’d think it was voice recognition or some app, so take off my phone case.”
I think that slight dicking around with the phone and time misdirection is a nice little touch. It could be slightly jarring if you just immediately pulled out your phone the moment they name their selection. I feel it’d beg the question “What’s in his other pockets?” Even if there isn’t anything in your pockets, you don’t want them going down that line of thought.
Conclusion
We all know about creating presentations, and to include this sort of stuff as a part of a larger routine and whatnot. Yes, this could be part of some elaborate mentalism routine. I think (as many of the social media videos showcase) it’s a fun little piece on its own. Vegetables might be a bit too random of a category to throw out there, but you can force that category and continue from there.
As of late, I’ve decided to strip away everything and do things very simply. In my wallet I have a little envelope with a business card inside of it. The business card has a big carrot drawn on it. In the middle of a routine, I might ask the psy force questions as if they are related to my mind reading.
“Name a vegetable. Oh, cabbage? Hmm, okay. Pegged you for more of a parsnip guy myself… shot in the dark, it’s a black card?”
It just brings a type of nonsensical Nymanian “fauxcess” to the trick. More often than not they do name carrot and I have another hit out of seemingly nowhere.
If it does miss, I am okay with reframing it as a nonsensical fauxcess, joke, or experiment.
Extra Credits
Lastly, there is some work on the carrot force done by great thinkers in our craft that I want to mention.
Check out Barrie Richardson’s effect called “Giuoco Piano” in his book Curtain Call.
In the October 2005 issue of Genii, Mike Allee has a gag prediction routine with the vegetable force called “Broccoli and Carrot”.
Roger Crabtree has a force called “14 Carats” in The Pallbearer’s Review Vol. 9 (No. 10), 1974.