A wrapped primitive value is unboxed and converted to another primitive type as part of the evaluation of a conditional ternary operator (the b ? e1 : e2 operator). The semantics of Java mandate that if e1 and e2 are wrapped numeric values, the values are unboxed and converted/coerced to their common type (e.g, if e1 is of type Integer and e2 is of type Float, then e1 is unboxed, converted to a floating point value, and boxed. See JLS Section 15.25.