The Psychopath Test

Technorati tags: Psychology, Psychopath, Test

A friend of mine sent me the following test via e-mail (thanks Annita!). I thought it was pretty intriguing, so I'm sharing it with y'all. The original author is unknown, but I did find reference to it here.

The Psychopath Test

Read the following question, come up with an answer and then click on the "CLICK HERE for the rest of the post" link for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads. No one I know has gotten it right.

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing. She believed him to be her dream guy so much, that she fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.

Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?
(Give it some thought before peeking at the answer)

Answer: She was hoping the guy would appear at the funeral again. If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by a famous American Psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in the test and answered the question correctly.

Now, a note from Walski: This is NOT a true test. There is a site on the Internet, snopes.com that refutes (or on rare occassion confirms) urban legends, incredulous stories, scare-hoaxes through e-mails, etc. There's a lot of those these days. snopes.com is a good resource for one to find out if that scare e-mail you get is true or not.

In any case, this is what snopes.com has to say, among other things, about this particular "test":

"The assumption that all sociopaths approach problems with a "Whom can I kill to solve this" mentality (and that sociopaths believe everyone else thinks this way as well) is an erroneous assumption based upon a false stereotype.

Would that it were that simple. Psychopaths are intermingled with the general population and are not that easily identified."

The rest of the hoax report can be found here.

So, boys & girls, the next time you receive something in the e-mail that's almost believably scary, incredible, or both, go look it up at snopes.com to verify whether or not it's true, or just an urban legend. A healthy dose of cynicism can be good for you...