Icebreaker Difficulty = Low

Quick Answer Questions are presented to participants to answer quickly. The questions are tricky because they are presented in context of something else that makes the correct answer less obvious. Time Guideline: 10 minutes

Purpose To illustrate how we sometimes jump to incorrect conclusions because of the way that information is presented to us.

Resources A penny and a nickel

Example 1 What color are the clouds? (They will answer “white”) What do cows drink? (If participants answer that cows drink milk, explain that they give milk and drink water.) Next ask participants to spell the word top. What do you do at a green light? (If they say that they stop at a green light, explain that you go through a green light.) Before asking this last question, show a penny and a nickel. Ask the first part of the question: Johnny’s mother had three children… Now hold up the penny and then the nickel and say: Penny, Nicholas, and _____.

Example 1 (cont.) Expect participants to try to come up with another name that has something to do with a coin. After letting them struggle for a few moments, explain that the correct answer is “Johnny.”

Debrief: Explain that the reason why they answered these questions incorrectly was the context in which each question was asked. Sometimes we perceive things differently because of the setting or context in which we are presented communications. If these questions were asked without the other information paired purposely to get participants to think a certain way, these questions would have been easier to answer. Explain that context often is the most important part of communications.

Variations: Ask individual participants to answer each question rather than posing them to the entire group.