Usually when you’re able to solve a riddle, you feel pretty good about yourself, but if you can figure out this one then you might need to talk to a therapist.
Apparently, if you correctly answer this brainteaser, you’re a psychopath.
The riddle is:
While at her own mother’s funeral, a woman meets a guy she doesn’t know. She thinks this guy is amazing – her dream man – and is pretty sure he could be the love of her life. However, she never asked for his name or number, and afterwards, could not find anyone who knew who he was. A few days later, the girl kills her own sister. Question: Why did she do it?
Did you figure it out? A psychopath would know the answer is that the girl killed her sister because she hoped the mystery guy would also show up to her sister’s funeral and she would be able to see him again.
If you got it right, don’t start padding up your walls just yet – no one knows where the riddle came from so it’s not like it is a professionally approved method for diagnosing psychopaths.
Anyways, according to Psychology Today, only 1% of the population are true psychopaths.
Every now and then, a riddle appears online that purports to tell you if you’re a psychopath or not. There are several that are often cited, but here are two somewhat notorious examples picked out by Business Insider.
The first is a tale of murder and funerals.
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“While at her own mother’s funeral, a woman meets a guy she doesn’t know. She thinks this guy is amazing — her dream man — and is pretty sure he could be the love of her life. However, she never asked for his name or number and afterwards could not find anyone who knows who he was. A few days later the girl kills her own sister – but why?”
There are many ways to answer this question, but if you suggest that it’s because the girl thought the man would turn up at her sister’s subsequent funeral, you’re apparently a bit of a psychopath.
The second, which actually comes from an official questionnaire used in several studies, involves a battle between individual rescue and the greater good – an assessment of utilitarianism. It goes as follows:
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“A runaway trolley is about to run over and kill five people and you are standing on a footbridge next to a large stranger; your body is too light to stop the train, but if you push the stranger onto the tracks, killing him, you will save the five people. Would you push the man?”
If you push the man, it arguably makes you more of a psychopath. Even if you’re saving more people, you’re still committing a murder to do so.
Here’s the problem: psychopathy, a personality disorder that falls on something of a spectrum, cannot be defined by answering just one single question, or even one survey.
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That first riddle about the funeral has been thoroughly debunked several times before, and it’s not entirely clear where it came from.
The second riddle has been used in studies and it has some merit, but no academic worth their salt would claim that one single question can reveal the psychopaths in your midst. This is why many such questions are used by researchers to just get an idea of how psychopathic someone may or may not be, but even then, this doesn’t properly identify a psychopath.
Business Insider points this out themselves, but there’s even more to this than first meets the eye.
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Ask yourself: what do you think a psychopath is? A murdering, violent, unthinking monster, right? Actually, no. The somewhat creative way the term “psychopath” is often used throughout much of the media hints that this is indeed the definition, but it’s not at all.
Psychopathy is often ambiguously defined, and its details are hotly debated among experts.
Craig S. Neumann, Professor of Psychology at the University of North Texas, recently explained that although psychopathy is definitely real, it’s not as simple as a yes/no option for people. It’s almost certainly about a variety of traits, not just one defining characteristic.
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“Despite the media’s portrayal and the general publics’ conception of the psychopath as seemingly inhuman and fundamentally unlike most people, the empirical evidence from large-scale studies suggests that psychopathic traits are dimensional in nature and thus are continuously distributed from low to high, as opposed to being a categorical condition where one either has the disorder or does not,” he wrote in a blog post.
In general, if someone has psychopathic tendencies, then they likely exhibit a few or most of these characteristics to varying degrees of severity: a lack of empathy, an ability to become emotionally detached, a lack of remorse, extremely bold social behaviors, a lack of fear, and unconscientiousness.
Even these are sometimes debated, however – and it’s worth pointing out that psychopathy isn’t yet a truly diagnosable, unique personality disorder, partly because a consensus on what it specifically is hasn’t been reached.
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Psychopaths are also more likely than others to exhibit narcissism and Machiavellianism (i.e. be manipulative), but not always. They aren’t necessarily crazy, deranged or violent, and they can either struggle or excel intellectually. CEOs, journalists, astronauts, negotiators, and surgeons often exhibit psychopathic tendencies – but again, not always.
It’s not clear where psychopathy even comes from. How much of it is societal and psychological, and how much is hardwired into our neurology?
It’s not even certain how many people in society might be psychopathic to some degree. The proliferation of varyingly rigid psychological tests that let you self-diagnose your psychopathy arguably doesn’t help things out in this regard.
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The point is that this is an issue that people want to be more black and white, more clear-cut, and simpler to understand, but it’s not. Experts in their respective fields are still trying to understand it themselves, which is why they’re conducting as much research on it as possible.
Worried you might be a psychopath, free of all empathy and willing to do whatever it takes to meet your own wants and needs? Spoiler: if you’re worrying about being a psychopath, you probably aren’t one. Psychopaths don’t tend to worry about that kind of thing.
But if that reasoning alone isn’t good enough for you, it’s time to put your faith in the internet, which has handily come up with a one-question test to establish once and for all if you’re a psychopath. Kind of. Maybe. READY? Here it is…
This is a genuine psychological test. It is a story about a girl.While at the funeral of her own mother, she met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy she believed him to be, that she fell in love with him then and there. A few days later, the girl killed her own sister.What is her motive in killing her sister?
Apparently only psychopaths will get the correct answer.
Think about it. Ponder. What are you coming up with?
Here’s the correct answer, meaning that if you immediately came up with this, the internet has decreed you are a murderous psychopath. Eek.
Answer: She was hoping the guy would come to her sister’s funeral.
My immediate answers were ‘because her sister had secretly slept with the guy’ and ‘she’d actually killed her mum and needed to get rid of the one person who knew’. So I’m fine. Right?
ANYWAY. If you did answer it correctly, don’t panic.
As pointed out by indy100 and Bustle, the test really isn’t a valid form of diagnosis. Psychopathy is much, much more complex, and no psychologist would label you a psychopath unless you ticked off a large number of behaviours on a checklist.
And even if you are a psychopath, you’re not necessarily hellbent on murdering your sister and stabbing little old ladies. Plenty of psychopaths actually excel in life, staying murder-free and using their naturally driven nature to get huge amounts of success (you should read Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test if you want to learn more about that. It’s super interesting).
In short: yes, answering that question correctly definitely reveals something interesting about who you are. But maybe don’t trust a simplistic riddle from the internet to correctly label you for life, yeah?
A puzzling riddle posted online has had people scratching their heads trying to figure it all out.
It might actually be a good thing to get the answer wrong though as a correct answer is meant to indicate you’re a psychopath – supposedly.
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The riddle has got people scratching their heads for the answer
Credit: Getty Images – Getty
What is the ‘why did the woman kill her sister’ riddle?
The riddle poses the question: “A young woman is attending her mother’s funeral.
“While there, she meets a man she has never seen before and falls in love immediately.
“After the funeral she tries to find him but cannot. Several days later she kills her sister.
“Why does she kill her sister?”
The ‘correct’ answer is: “She killed her sister in hopes that the man would be at the funeral.”
If you gave the correct answer, apparently this is a sign you’re a psychopath.
The riddle is similar to one said to be used in studies which poses the question: “A runaway trolley is about to run over and kill five people and you are standing on a footbridge next to a large stranger; your body is too light to stop the train, but if you push the stranger onto the tracks, killing him, you will save the five people. Would you push the man?”
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The question is meant to show if you have psychopathic tendencies
Credit: Getty Images – Getty
Why are you a psychopath if you get the answer correct?
If you say that you would push the man this is thought to illustrate psychopathic tendencies because even if you’re saving more people, you’re still committing a murder to do so.
Don’t worry too much though if you thought committing murder was the right way to go.
In reality answering one question doesn’t really tell the experts much.
Psychopathy, a personality disorder that falls on something of a spectrum, cannot be defined by answering just one single question.
No worthy academic would claim that one single question can reveal your inner psycho.
If someone has psychopathic tendencies, then they likely exhibit a few or most of these characteristics to varying degrees of severity: a lack of empathy, an ability to become emotionally detached, a lack of remorse, extremely bold social behaviors, a lack of fear, and unconscientiousness.
