A riddle of sorts...

[GrumpyMrGruff]

Recently, one of my friends posed a question to me. He claimed that it was a psychological litmus test of sorts. I doubt that this is or ever was used in research psych, but I've asked some people and their responses have been interesting. The riddle is as follows:

'A woman is attending her mother's funeral. While at the service, she notices a handsome man. Upon talking to him, she becomes quite enamored. However, she knows that it wouldn't be acceptable to romantically approach him at her mother's funeral. She decides to wait for a few weeks. After weeks of thinking about him, she is dismayed to find that she has lost his contact information. She tries repeatedly to reach him, hardly eating or sleeping. This goes on for months without success. Soon after, she kills her sister.

Why does she do it?'

The answer is Googleable (it has been floating around the net for a while), but I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it before to post their first reactions before reading other replies or Googling. I've heard some fairly elaborate answers so far and would like to see what you come up with.

Cheers,
Grumpy

[Furrowed Brow]

She's an obsessive personality evidenced by her fixation on the guy at the funeral. Probably had an enlarged sense of her own inadequacy brought on by an over critical mother. Which explains why she held back from making a pass at the guy at her mother‘s funeral. The mother also favoured the sister who was always the bright and successful one. As a result the sister was more comfortable in her own skin, which meant she always had a better relationship with her mother. At the last this meant the mother’s will favoured the successful sister. A bias that accentuated the inadequate sisters envy of her successful sister. Ironically because she was more confident the successful sister had also taken a shine to this guy, and had made a pass at him. After a few months they got engaged, and is then promptly killed by her jealous sister with the personality disorder.

[Confused]

She's an obsessive personality evidenced by her fixation on the guy at the funeral. Probably had an enlarged sense of her own inadequacy brought on by an over critical mother. Which explains why she held back from making a pass at the guy at her mother‘s funeral. The mother also favoured the sister who was always the bright and successful one. As a result the sister was more comfortable in her own skin, which meant she always had a better relationship with her mother. At the last this meant the mother’s will favoured the successful sister. A bias that accentuated the inadequate sisters envy of her successful sister. Ironically because she was more confident the successful sister had also taken a shine to this guy, and had made a pass at him. After a few months they got engaged, and is then promptly killed by her jealous sister with the personality disorder.

Wow. Never in a million years would I have thought it out this thoroughly, LOL. Bright minds .

My guess, her sister found the contact info and made a pass first.

[McCulloch]

Recently, one of my friends posed a question to me. He claimed that it was a psychological litmus test of sorts. I doubt that this is or ever was used in research psych, but I've asked some people and their responses have been interesting. The riddle is as follows:

'A woman is attending her mother's funeral. While at the service, she notices a handsome man. Upon talking to him, she becomes quite enamored. However, she knows that it wouldn't be acceptable to romantically approach him at her mother's funeral. She decides to wait for a few weeks. After weeks of thinking about him, she is dismayed to find that she has lost his contact information. She tries repeatedly to reach him, hardly eating or sleeping. This goes on for months without success. Soon after, she kills her sister.

Why does she do it?'

I'm not quite so concerned as to why she did it, I've seen enough crime shows on TV and read enough mystery novels to come up with a few plausible ideas:

• She was jealous of her sisters (real or imagined) relationship with this guy.
• She discovered something sinister about him in her attempts to make contact

I'm interested in how this is a psychological litmus test. In what way are the responses interesting? What do they show about the respondents?

[Furrowed Brow]

Okay. I googled and found the answer . This is a test to see how psychopathic you are. It seems my answer shows me to have a turn for pap fiction but I'm glad to say myself, McCulloch and confused are not psychopaths. However I did smile at the answer.

Here is a link to the answer - well the answer that is supposed to show whether you have psychopathic tendencies. Be warned this is a spoiler.

Grumpy's presentation is also flawed. Which is something we can discuss once more have had a go. However this is the correct formulation of the scenario.

It is a story about a young lady. While at the funeral of her own mother, she met this guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing. So much her dream man she believed him to be, she fell in love with him right there. Unfortunately she forgot to ask for his number and could not find him afterwards. A few days later the girl killed her own sister.

[Goat]

Recently, one of my friends posed a question to me. He claimed that it was a psychological litmus test of sorts. I doubt that this is or ever was used in research psych, but I've asked some people and their responses have been interesting. The riddle is as follows:

'A woman is attending her mother's funeral. While at the service, she notices a handsome man. Upon talking to him, she becomes quite enamored. However, she knows that it wouldn't be acceptable to romantically approach him at her mother's funeral. She decides to wait for a few weeks. After weeks of thinking about him, she is dismayed to find that she has lost his contact information. She tries repeatedly to reach him, hardly eating or sleeping. This goes on for months without success. Soon after, she kills her sister.

Why does she do it?'

The answer is Googleable (it has been floating around the net for a while), but I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it before to post their first reactions before reading other replies or Googling. I've heard some fairly elaborate answers so far and would like to see what you come up with.

Cheers,
Grumpy

Insufficient evidence for a meaningful answer. I would say that with the evidence provided, there is not enough of a reason to link the desire for to talk to this guy with her killing her sister.

[Fallibleone]

I haven't looked at the answer.

She got so sleep-deprived and malnourished through weeks of negleting her bodily needs that she ran a red light while taking her sister shopping and as a result she died.

Edit: OK I've looked at the answer now. Once again I managed to spectacularly get hold of the wrong end of the stick.

[HughDP]

Although I didn't answer this like a psychopath first off, I can see how logical the answer is now that I know it. I wonder what that says about me.

[wrekk]

Very interesting answer. I'm sure glad I got it wrong.