Only Geniuses and Schizophrenics Can Answer These Three Questions Correctly
How a person answers the most straightforward questions can reveal a lot about them and about what’s going through their head. Questions are used all around the world by psychologists to find out whether an individual is a genius or needs professional help — or both.
Bright Side has found the three key questions that can determine the personality sitting inside your head — the Mad Hatter or Salvador Dalí.
1. What do a kettle and a steamboat have in common?
2. What do a race car and a tornado have in common?
3. What do a shoe and a pencil have in common?
And now for the most interesting part: who are you?
If you couldn’t think of answers to these questions, don’t worry — your state of mind is completely healthy. But if they turned out to be completely simple, then you may have an inclination towards psychological problems, and it may be worth seeking professional advice to make sure everything’s OK.
This kind of test is an example of the “contraposition method,“ which is used to reveal the extent of someone’s awareness. If someone with a standard mind is asked the question, ”What do a crow and a desk have in common?“ they’ll probably answer “Nothing.” To some extent, they’re correct. In general, these two things can’t be compared. Someone with schizophrenia, on the other hand, immediately searches for less prominent, deeper connections between the two objects. Without too much thinking they might exclaim that people write letters at their desks, and a crow has feathers that can be used to write with.
But how can you tell the difference between a schizophrenic person and a real genius? The difference is that the former will answer such questions immediately, whereas a genius will need to concentrate, discard the first, most obvious, and least interesting ideas that come into their head and come up with a truly unique answer.
Illustrator: Leonid Khan for BrightSide.me