Does anybody knows why people always pick number 3???

[gafa]

Moderation note: Moved the first post of this thread from the math forum thread 5341, because it’s about human psychology, not math.

 

Does anybody knows why people always pick number 3??? You if write down on a piece a paper the numbers 1, 2, 3 e 4 in sequence but not together, then you show to a friend and ask him to pick one of them and tell you what number they picked right away. Well, most people will pick number 3. It's very impressive. B) To make it a trick, you write the number 3 on the other side of the paper before to approach a person. Then you write the four numbers and ask him to pick one. Out of 10 people, 9 you pick number 3 unless they have the numbers 1, 2 or 3 as favorite numbers for some personal reason. Once they say "three" you ask them to flip out the paper. They will have the felling that you have read their mind. People always Freak:eek:UT!! But i have know Idea whey it works. Do you know? :hihi:

[freeztar]

I tried this on my wife and she picked 3! :)

That's hardly a significant statistical sample though. I would imagine that a larger sampling would show higher percentages for 2 and 3 and lower percentages for 1 and 4.

 

I have a theory for this, but I'm not sure of its validity as I'm not currently aware of any research efforts in this regard. But hey, I'll throw it out for fodder.

 

The first premise is that people tend to ignore the periphery. In this case, 1 and 4 are the endpoints. When I try to analyze my own decision making (not easy to do objectively obviously), I tend to see those endpoints as delimiters. Basically, it acts like the edge of a photograph. It's seldom noticed or paid attention to because the edge is only the demarcation of the beginning or end of the "interesting stuff". From a biological perspective, this makes intuitive sense because as omnivorous mammals, us humans need to mainly know what is to be focused on. The periphery data is necessary for reference, but not so much for focus, and subsequently intent.

 

As an analogy, consider a deck of playing cards where a magician asks a participant to "choose a card, any card". It is very rare that a person will choose a card from the bottom or top proximity, let alone the utmost bottom or top card, in my experience. Also in my experience, people that do pick the bottom or top card generally have a mistrust of the magic trick or are trying to sabotage the trick.

 

The second premise is the preference for choosing 3 over 2. The most obvious explanation is that three is the magic number. Yes it is, it's the magic number. :naughty:

Though, before we all chuckle at that, there may be some culturally embedded truth in those famous lyrics.

 

At least in my experience, there are lots of cultural ties to the number three. As a child, I counted (and was counted to) the number 3 on occassions ranging from "hide and seek" games to "I'm gonna give you to the count of three". For whatever reason, 3 is sort of magical. As they humorously say in Monty Python's The Search for the Holy Grail,

And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

 

Philosophically speaking, three frees us from binary thought. We no longer see things as is or isn't, but rather as is or isn't or maybe/kinda, or any other tertiary state we decide to assign.

 

So, in a sense, 2 is a bit more "boring" than 3; and, 1 and 4 are already out, so 3 is most favorable.

 

It has weakenesses I know. Hopefully this post will encourage dialogue (err..trilogue :eek:). It would be interesting to find some research by a psycholinguist that can either assert or not assert a potential for syntactic preference such as that between the visual "appeal" of either the character "2" or the character "3". Presumably this test could be conducted where another character syntax for numbers (but similar culture, in regards to numerology) could be compared to English results, perhaps eliminating any bias for syntactic "appeal".

 

Fun stuff! :hyper:

 

Anyone know of any research relevant to this discussion? Any thoughts in general?

[gafa]

cool...

[Moontanman]

It's interesting, the number 3 has alwasy been important to me. I've never been able to explain it.

[freeztar]

It's interesting, the number 3 has alwasy been important to me. I've never been able to explain it.

 

Does that mean you would have picked three?

[Moontanman]

Does that mean you would have picked three?

 

Almost certainly, when ever I build or design something the number three always figures prominently. when i decorate an aquarium or pond or yard I always arrange things in groups or multiples of three. I noticed this tendency even as a child.

[A23]

No, it's

 

if you don't have 3 exit in your flat, you've lost.

 

3 is the minimal number of exits in a closed spaced, else you will be killed with certainty, because everyone of us have a mother and a father, (or people making believe they are) the big predator, so if you don't have at least 3 exits, your parents will kill you for sure. But I don't know if you need a sis/bros to kill or if they just block the child inside until it starves.

 

(There is a proof, but I don't remember where I heard this)

[Rade]

Gafa....

 

OK, correct me if I am wrong...but the choices only were 1,2,3,4...correct ? By chance, you would expect 1,000,000 people to select each 25% of the time. So, you are saying, more people select 3...so why ?

 

First, I predict you would get a completely different response if the possible numbers were this sequence:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,

 

I predict more people would select #'s 5 (first choice) and 8 (second choice) over # 3. Here is my hypothesis:

 

I hold that the human mind is highly adapted to the dialectic--it looks to see how the two logical extremes of anything (number sequence, left vs right politics, too much food vs too little food, spend too much energy vs spend too little energy, extreme happiness vs extreme sadness, etc.) can find common ground, the "middle". OK, let us apply this dialectic model to which numbers would be most often selected for the sequence: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

 

Why # 5 as first choice ? -- because it is in the "middle", statistically it is at the same time the "median" and the "mean" as an average. On average, folks just like the "middle" --it is a safe place to be (i.e., the middle of the road), as far away from either extreme as one can get. Of course, some individuals look for the extreme(s)--they are driven to them, but I hold this is not "normal" = "average" behavior for the human mind.

 

Why # 8 as second choice ? -- The dialectic model predicts that the mind first looks to the extremes, rejects both, then selects the "middle". However, at the same time that it selects the middle it does not completely reject the notion of "extreme" as having value.

 

OK, note that # 8 is the first number down from the extreme, #9--so, given the choice of being at one extreme (low = #1) or another (high = #9), the human mind prefers to be closer to the high extreme and will reject the actual extreme. This makes sense in many ways. One would rather have their cup almost overflow than empty--especially if the cup is a measure of food supply, or happiness, etc.

 

OK, now back your question about why people select #3 more than by chance when given the possibilities: 1,2,3,4

 

Note that in this sequence the "middle" is undefined as a whole number, so, for the same reason folks select #8 over #2 when the possibilities are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9...this may explain why they select #3...(that is, they reject either extreme, but want their middle to overflow rather than be near dry). If the above hypothesis is correct, then it would predict that the second most population number from the sequence 1,2,3,4--after #3 (first choice) would be #2 (second choice)--the reason being that the human mind wants to reject either extreme (#1,4) over either middle (#2,3).

 

OK, this is my best guess to answer your OP question.

[alexander]

Well prediction is kind of a cool thing to play with in terms of cards, or mentalism (magic direction). While you can use slight of hand to force cards, you can use specially arranged decks to predict which card was chosen, or arrange cards and then use special counting techniques to arrive at one or another of the same cards in the stack, you can use mental hinting and patterning to get, probably 70-80% accuracy in card prediction by using simple psychological hints, or combining people's tendencies.

 

Consider the following experiment:

you will need an odd number of cards, you can use blank cards and draw your shapes, or get cards with various shapes on them. Lets say that what we are going to use is this, circle, square, wavy lines, triangle, star (pointy, important). Ok, lay them out in such an order where the star is in the middle, the rest of the order matters little, though some experimentation may prove some cards to be more easily forced in the way i am about to describe.

Lay out the cards in front of your subject, establish eye to eye contact and explain to them that you have laid out 5 cards in front of them, and that you want them to do now is look down and pick one. Now the timing for this and how you do this is important, as you do this, take your dominant hand and in a manner not dissimilar to a karate chop motion to one of the corner cards (if you are right handed you will be pointing in such a manner to the right card, but make it feel natural, and you want to motion to the word one, as it will act on a subconscious level; of the words in that sentence, emphasize one, by saying it more clearly, slowly, pausing just after for longer then other words, and saying it a little bit more loudly, and articulately). Without letting them glare at the cards, capture their attention and ask them to now mentally transmit or repeat to you, in their mind the card they have chosen. Gather up the cards and separate the card you had motioned to and put it either crossed on top of the other cards, or in a separate pile.

Now look back at the person and say something to the extent that you are picking up on their body language and you are getting an "s", and that you think that it's a star. If the reaction is positive, you have completed your task correctly, if the reaction is negative, ask them to name the card. Chances are it is the card that you suggested to them which should be either crossed on top of the stack on the table or in a separate stack, you can now ask them to flip that card. Statistics tell you that you have, collectively a 40% chance at guessing their card, but i think if you actually perform this experiment with a 100 people, you will find that you hit the right card 70+% of the time, just don't expect 100% results, and note that you can repeat the experiment if you failed, or do it with another person... Oh also don't explain the card that you moved if you failed the trick and want to try it again.

 

Further thoughts on ways to be suggestive and get cooperation from your subject. Explain to them that you are performing an experiment of a sort and ask them if they would like to participate, readily agreeing will put them in a position where suggestion will be more welcome.

 

What you are mixing in this experiment:

card position - People rarely go for the cards on the end, from surveys, one knows that people are least likely to completely agree or like or completely disagree or dislike something. if asked to rate something on the scale from one to five, least likely answers will be one and five

card appearance - remember that i emphasized the spiky star, this is not without its visual cues, card clearly standing out from the other cards, especially if you can make the square and trinagle juust a slightly bit rounded and keep the star spiky

motion and suggestion - to suggest another card is to increase your chances being right, the subtle point and voice tone suggestion are likely to sway someone who was not going to pick the star, to pick the card you motioned to both with your hand (and remember that movement is something registered by our brain and paid attention to, so whichever card you move your hand to, is the first one that will be looked at) and the voice at the same time, both are good hints to a suggestible person...

 

Another thought on the position, if you were to perform the 5 number experiment completely out of memory, person is much more less likely to pick the three, and much more likely to pick 5, then 1 then 4, but that has more to do with how our short-term memory works, then the number 3.

 

Another thing with number three is the shape, it is the only one out of the 12345 sequence that has no straight edges...

[joekgamer]

I have seen that when asked to pick a random number, people pick 3 (if the numbers are from 1-5) or 7 (if the numbers are from 1-10) for the most part.

 

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they are odd and/or prime numbers? Or the fact that they are both three away from the nearest 10?

[Qfwfq]

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they are odd and/or prime numbers? Or the fact that they are both three away from the nearest 10?

It's because we have 5 fingers on each hand.