RoR: Forum

My answer was that she thought her sister had something to do with his disappearance. But that clearly would have been a motive involving hatred, resentment or revenge. The motive that the killers' suspected her of having was more calculating and predatory, and one which they had no difficulty imputing to an average person. Apparently, there is a tendency to impute our own thinking and motivation to others. Very, very interesting.

- Bill

Post 2

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 9:46am

The answer was immediately obvious. It might be more telling if the title didn't give the answer away, tho.

Post 3

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 1:26pm

It wasn't obvious to me... (Should we be worried about Ted? :-)

Post 4

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 1:49pm

No. I would have asked him for his number the first time.

Post 5

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 2:14pm

nope - I had no idea - made no sense to me - thought maybe she had married him but then that would mean she could find him, so I could not come up with a reason

Post 6

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 2:57pm

My thinking was that she had a twin sister who didn't make it to the funeral.

The man, hoping to find the woman at her home address (which was printed on the flyers at the funeral), came by to court her later that very night. Her sister, an identical twin, answered the door and fell in love with the man, too. She pretended she was her sister and she seduced the man into having sex. The original woman came home just after he left and figured out what had just happened between her sister and him.

So she killed her sister.

Ed
[like Ted, all of this seemed rather obvious to me]

Post 7

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 3:07pm

To me, it was just shocking that a thought process that was completely foreign to me could be logical in a thoroughly perverse way.

Sam

Post 8

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 3:43pm

lolololol!

I've heard this before, but I couldn't remember the answer for the life of me. Now I do!

Post 9

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 5:33pm

Well, I got it right, no problem. What can I say?

Post 10

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 5:39pm

Do you suspect that the title, Laure, may have clued you into the answer? I went straight there myself. But I suspect I am a good problem solver, not that I lack emapthy or have the other attributes of a sociopath. I really wish I had taken this under controlled conditions.

Post 11

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 8:31pm

No, I think it was obvious because the only information given was that the woman really, really wanted to meet this man again, so I figured that was the motive, and maybe her reasoning is that if the man was at her mother's funeral, he'd be at her sister's funeral, too. (No, I don't think either of us is a psychopath!)

Post 12

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 10:23am

Wow! Both Laure and Ted got the answer! I didn't have a clue. It wasn't obvious to me at all.

What the psychologist who came up with this evidently needed was a control group of non-psychopaths in order to see how they answered it. But maybe he did, and there were statistically fewer non-psychopaths who got it right.

Curious.

Post 13

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - 8:17am