A diagnosed narcissist claims that solving a morbid riddle reveals whether you may have the mind of a psychopath or sociopath.
He said that he and his sister — who he claims is a diagnosed sociopath — are the only people in his life who have been able to answer the riddle correctly.
Narcissism, psychopathy and sociopathy are each distinctive personality disorders that come with their own unique characteristics.
But they share the same core traits: a lack of empathy, manipulative behavior and selfishness.
The riddle tests a person’s ability to think in this way. It goes like this: A woman goes to her mother’s funeral and meets a man that she’s never met before.
The two of them really hit it off, and the woman thinks he might be her soulmate.
But once the funeral is over, she realizes she never asked for the man’s name or phone number, and she has no idea who he is or how to contact him. Everyone she asks says they don’t know either.
She’s upset that she is never going to see him again. Then, a week later, she murders her sister.
So, the riddle is, why did she kill her sister?
‘For me, the answer was pretty obvious… Which was met with a very — how do I put it — very startled looks from my friends who asked it to me,’ said the man that shared the riddle, who goes by ‘The Nameless Narcissist’ on TikTok.
‘And my sister answered it really slowly because she thought it was a trick question cause she found it so obvious,’ he said in a recent video.
The answer to the riddle is that the woman killed her sister because if the man showed up to her mother’s funeral, it’s likely that he would show up to her sister’s funeral too.
Therefore, she murdered a family member in order to orchestrate another encounter with the man she’s interested in — something only a very cold, calculating person would do.
The Nameless Narcissist stresses that there is ‘no research to validate’ this riddle, and it certainly should not be used to diagnose someone with a personality disorder.
Personality disorders are complex, nuanced conditions that only trained medical officials can diagnose.
There is no one question or survey that can actually assess whether someone is a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath.
These personality disorders are diagnosed using lengthy psychological assessments administered by trained professionals who can determine whether the person meets all the criteria for narcissism, sociopathy or psychopathy.
The criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder, which encompasses both sociopathy and psychopathy, include deceitfulness, impulsivity, aggressiveness, failure to follow the law, reckless disregard for safety, irresponsibility and lack of remorse.
But if you suspect someone may possess some traits of these disorders, it could be interesting to see how they approach the answer to this question.
This isn’t the only riddle that is said to test people’s psychopathic tendencies.
Here’s another example: 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, you would save the five people below but kill the stranger in the process.
Would you push the man?
If you answered yes, it could be argued that you have more psychopathic tendencies. Even if you would kill the man for the greater good, you still have to be willing to commit murder to do so.
One study published in the journal Cognition found that participants who said they would push the stranger to save five lives also scored high on psychopathy assessments and low on empathy tests.
Known as ‘the trolley problem,’ this thought experiment is used in many research settings to assess how a person would respond to a moral dilemma.
But even though there is some solid research to validate this test, it still should not be used as the sole diagnostic tool, experts say.
