This is very poorly set up. What are even the facts of the case?
0. We're instructed to forget what we know about these characters, but then through hints we're supposed to recover the details of these characters' relationships to each other and the world?
1. Is this a real sheriff?
2. Did Robin Hood and Little John do anything deserving of being locked up?
3. What was the previous relationship between Maid Marion and Robin Hood? Were they truly lovers or something less?
4. What was the previous relationship between Maid Marion and the sheriff? Were they necessarily citizens with a power differential?
5. Would the sheriff have released his prisoners the next morning regardless of Maid Marion's actions?
6. Was Robin's "abuse" verbal or physical in nature?
7. What was the previous relationship between Little John and Maid Marion? Were they necessarily unlinked except via a mutual tie to Robin Hood?
8. What was the previous relationship between Little John and Robin Hood? Were they friends with some obligation to each other, or merely cellmates?
9. Was Little John truthful in his promise of devotion?
Many different rankings can stem from differing understanding of those facts rather than differing moral standards. Not to mention the conflation of Honesty with Morality.
I've seen this kind of story in psych class, the missing facts are not an error; they're the point of the story. What you fill in for these holes is supposed to tell something about you.
Another important missing fact: Was the Sherrif's offer time-limited? It makes a difference regarding whether or not he was coercing Maid Marion, whether she had an opportunity to discuss the proposition with Robin, and thus whether Robin is right in considering her actions a betrayal.
Moreover, if we're not assuming anything inherently dishonest with the premise (that two men are in jail), then it is very reasonable to assume that RH and LJ did something dishonest or immoral to begin with. Most people seem to put LJ (whom we are told is a convicted criminal) as one of the most honorable. I bet this would be more pronounced if multiple surveys were given with different names, like if LJ/RH instead had the names of famous criminals.
> We're instructed to forget what we know about these characters, but then through hints we're supposed to recover the details of these characters' relationships to each other and the world?
Honestly, I think that's the point. You're told to forget your predispositions and be objective, and it's the degree to which you're able to and the biases that surface to fill the gaps of unknowns that this test is revealing.
I think you're trying to include too much context in this. I think the question is purely about how you see the bribery through sex. He's how I read this:
The sheriff's sin is that he can be bribed. He's corrupt.
Marion's sin is that she's willing to bribe to save those she loves.
Robin's sin is that he's jealous and possessive of those around him and doesn't appreciate the sacrifices they made for him.
I can't really see any fault in John. The only way I think you can see any fault in him is if you see Robin's jealousy and possessiveness as justified.
I'm quite the minority. My thoughts were as follows:
1. Maid Marion did something she didn't want in order to rescue a lover, and deservedly went with someone in the end. Understandable particularly after being the victim of unappreciation and abuse.
2. The sheriff imprisoned them for reasons that are not explained by the story. Can't fault him here. He allows himself to be bribed with sex which could be seen as a mercy in a certain light. More importantly, he was good on his word to release Robin and Little John, as opposed to abusing his power even further. Basically, he could have done far worse than he did.
3. Little John had the least to lose in all this, and as far as I can tell, hasn't done anything necessarily correct either. It's very easy to start off fulfilling the white knight role, but then have nothing to follow it up with. Neutral on his behavior and he ranks lower than the sheriff only because he had an easier decision to make.
4. Robin is the real cunt in this story from my perspective. Ingratitude coupled with abuse, and lack of empathy as to Marion's motivations.
The claims:
> Such an emphatic rejection of ready-made values is probably partly camouflage. You hate to be thought weak or insecure. You value honesty, and abhor hypocrisy.
> Men: Women are very much part of you life, and you are - or perhaps would like to be - quite ruthless, both with women and life in general.
... interesting.
*edit:formatting
Final edit:
I guess the underpinning difference between my perception of morality is that it's a bit relative based on the search space of decisions available. There are a ton of details omitted that would likely sway my decision a different way, however, so the solution set to this problem seems a bit unstable.
Eh, it seems to me the sheriff horribly abused his position of power. Either LJ and RH were imprisoned rightfully, in which case perhaps they shouldn't be just be released, or else the sheriff wrongly imprisoned them. Either way, he exploited his power as sheriff and blackmailed MM for sex.
RH's actions, on the other hand, while certainly misguided, are at least understandable, if he lives in a typical culture of masculinity, monogamy, and Victorian-era purity, where it's embarrassing to be rescued by a woman and shameful for women to have sex. He was probably feeling emasculated after being rescued by in such a fashion, and took out his anger on MM. (Which is bad, of course, but I don't think it's worse than what the sheriff did).
Finally, RH's "abuse" is left ambiguous, as opposed to the sheriff's which is very much explicit.
I think the most telling insight of the entire test, in all the times I've discussed it with people, is when guys read this
> Maid Marion begged the Sheriff for their release, pleading her love for Robin. The Sheriff agreed to release them only if Maid Marion spent the night with him.
And somehow many of them end up with the impression that MM offered sex.
edit: I wasn't really replying to this post in particular, it just seemed like a good place to go about it. If you check the response for women for your ordering, by the way, the response is fairly positive.
> He allows himself to be bribed with sex which could be seen as a mercy in a certain light.
My read was that he extorted sex, not agreed to a bribe. Had Maid Marion offered sex in exchange for Robin's freedom things might be different, but abusing a position of power to get sex is super-shady.
I'd be interested in hearing how you can think that coercive sex (MM want's RH released, SN will only release RH if MM has sex with him) rates higher with morally/honest than just "hasn't done anything necessarily correct"
Your post made me realize that my decision was colored by my previous knowledge of the characters, particularly from Ivanhoe. I wonder if I would have decided differently if they had used other names.
Interesting, but I'd be surprised if anyone who reads HN chose anything other than some permutation of {{Maid Marion, Little John}, {Robin Hood, The Sheriff}}, which cuts down the answer space by a factor of 6.
My own ranking was MM, LJ, RH, S. Did anyone choose something different from that? Or seriously choose anything different than one of the four permutations above?
We're supposed to leave all our preconceived notions behind, which means that Robin Hood & crew could be random people subject to the whims of an arbitrary and despotic sheriff. If thats the case, it's a much more difficult situation to judge.
This was my assumption when I first discovered and took the test. I was pretty set on R>S, but took a bit before I settled on M>J. All the answers I tried were horoscope-y "you are happy :)" and I was gonna forget about it.
However, then I showed it to a bunch of people, and they started getting all sorts of crazy super-critical results. We started working through them, and I realized that in its simplicity the test was nevertheless tapping on some fairly outrageous opinions about the tolerability of power abuse, and the purity of women. And it stuck with me.
I think the only way to get a good result outside of the range you describe is to describe yourself as a woman, where it gives a positive spin to M>S>J>R (which I came around to as well).
That was my initial reading too, but after talking to my wife (who also MJRS), I start wondering if Robin and John should be swapped. Robin may not have been right to be angry, but it is probably not all that surprising - he's undergone a traumatic experience (imprisonment), and then found out that he's been cuckolded by the same man who'd imprisoned him.
If he's still irreconcilably pissed a few days later, well sure, screw him. But that he acts out initially - not great, but not that surprising. Shouldn't John be trying to help his friend save his relationship, rather than suddenly running off with Marion as soon as there's an opportunity?
Marion is unambiguously blameless (although running off with John without giving Robin a chance to clear his head seems flighty), and the Sheriff completely irredeemable - by any reasonable standard he coerced Marion in to having sex, and then derelicted his duty by releasing two people he'd imprisoned based on a bribe.
You're given the opportunity to read through the mini personality assessments for all answers - whoever wrote them has some severe projections and prejudices.
I had MM and LJ swapped, but otherwise identical to your rankings. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with MM's actions, but she still did commit adultery and engage in bribery to circumvent the legal system (albeit for honorable reasons). LJ didn't do anything shifty.
Muddies the water and fuels discussion! If the question were more precisely specified, there might actually be a right answer :)
But, I wondered about this too. In fact my answers were pretty much opposites, depending on which I prioritised. In the end I left the decision up to my gut, and I'm kind of glad I did, because the results had some nice things to say... about my gut, at least. Not sure where that leaves the rest of me.
(I found the author's willingness not to pull punches in their assessments admirable, in that he/she avoided any MBTI-/horoscope-style wooliness - but some of the results came across a little overly scathing. If there isn't actually one right answer, there are certainly sections of the result space they're clearly convinced are incorrect. But if its inventor is truly a marriage expert, I've no doubt they have their reasons.)
At first I thought the same, but in the end honesty didn't factor much into it. Everyone was, right or wrong, pretty much straight up with each other. Maybe LJ wasn't so true to RH and MM & RH's relationship must have been somewhat less honest to come out with such opposing expectations but that predates this event. I even have trouble thinking the sheriff isn't honest if he's open about his misuse of power.
The particular analyses of the results here are dubious and in some instances pretty ruthless, but the test itself is really quite interesting. My sociology teacher used to present a morality test with a similar story, but with two more characters. We spent a lot of time arguing about it in class, and it led to some serious disagreements. I know I thought less of some people after that day.
Little John, Maid Marion, Robin Hood, The Sherriff
> Men: Perhaps you tend to idealize women and credit them with virtues they don't possess.
Swap Maid Marion and Robin Hood:
> Men: You are sexually inhibited with an underlying distrust of women.
This is crap. It seems putting Maid Marion in the top half means you credit women too much, and putting her in the bottom half means you discredit her too much.
The first two spots are fairly easy decisions to make. Little John had the hardest choice to make, and Maid Marion the second hardest. Both chose rightly.
Your proposed swap is really weird, placing Little John above Robin Hood but Robin Hood above Maid Marion. It indicates that you accepted that Little John is the real mensch in this situation, yet identify with Robin Hood's caddish behavior anyway.
The real decision here is whether Robin Hood is more honorable than the Sheriff. Ultimately the Sheriff was more honest to his baser desires, whereas Robin became irrationally controlling when confronted with a difficult situation.
If you thought Little John should have gotten the prize, then to be consistent, you have to put Robin in the loser's spot. Robin Hood chose wrongly when confronted with a moral dilemma in a way that traumatized the very person responsible for his freedom.
Giving Robin more credit than he deserves indicates that you identify with the feelings he had. They're the feelings of sexual inadequacy and possessiveness.
One interesting twist - reverse the genders of the characters involved and then decide your order of morality.
I did that with my girlfriend - both of us could make up our minds for the original tests, but when the genders were reversed, it took a long time for both of us to make sense of the situation and come up with the final ranking.
Very interesting to see how our brains are conditioned.
My answer would be different depending on whether the Sheriff was planning to keep them for a day anyway, or for life, or even kill them the next day. I feel this is an important part of the story, which is not clarified. Also not clarified is whether MM could talk to Robin first and ask him what he wanted.
From this perspective, J did nothing wrong, and helped solve M's problems. M had good intentions, but hurt R, but had little choice. S forced himself on someone against their will as a form of ransom. R lost both his friend and lover as a result of his actions.
The ranking of S and R comes down to whether you think that S forcing himself on M was intended to hurt R, and if he knew what R would do to M as a result.
I wonder if this had been changed from imprisonment to death for R (and possibly J, possibly not) if R's reaction would have changed, or if not, if it would change the S/R ranking.
S did not force himself on M. Objectively, he abused his power to make a trade for personal gain, and that's what you're judging. M was in no way forced to do anything and the way the story is presented is nearly as guilty as S in that she abused her sexual power for gain (undermining justice in the process) to free someone. The way it is presented, we don't know if it's altruistic or selfish.
It's a 'morality' test. You should ask "which morality"?
If we agreed on the code of conduct (procedure) to use, we could agree on a score for each.
Notice that two persons with the same ranking could have come from different scores (i.e. person A: (25,13,7,1=JRMS) vs Ranking from person B: (-1,-7,-10,-40=JRMS)). And this is just in the one-dimensional morality score system.
The test is mapping an infinite set of scores to a set of 24 choices, and then using those choices to criticize the chooser.
It's not clear to me what it means by "moral"... does it mean aligned with the mainstream morality of our society, or does it mean what I believe is good according to my personal morality?
There are a bunch of cases where these two differ (for me), just think of the Snowden and Silkroad cases, or attitudes towards marriage or promiscuity, or towards religion.
Awesome, no matter one answer you pick the test condemns you. This is less useful than even something like "What star wars character are you?" which is at least coherent in what it is attempting to discern.
Or maybe that's just the answer(s) you picked. MJRS gave me:
"We would expect you to be a happy, well-balanced person who likes people and is liked by others. You question whether many conventional views on morality are valid under all circumstances."
This doesn't appear to be social science either, though; more like a horoscope.
To the point of your comment though, I don't understand why anyone would think that applying scientific principles to humans and human interaction is any less valid a use of our time than any other application of the same methods.
[+] [-] aston|11 years ago|reply
0. We're instructed to forget what we know about these characters, but then through hints we're supposed to recover the details of these characters' relationships to each other and the world?
1. Is this a real sheriff?
2. Did Robin Hood and Little John do anything deserving of being locked up?
3. What was the previous relationship between Maid Marion and Robin Hood? Were they truly lovers or something less?
4. What was the previous relationship between Maid Marion and the sheriff? Were they necessarily citizens with a power differential?
5. Would the sheriff have released his prisoners the next morning regardless of Maid Marion's actions?
6. Was Robin's "abuse" verbal or physical in nature?
7. What was the previous relationship between Little John and Maid Marion? Were they necessarily unlinked except via a mutual tie to Robin Hood?
8. What was the previous relationship between Little John and Robin Hood? Were they friends with some obligation to each other, or merely cellmates?
9. Was Little John truthful in his promise of devotion?
Many different rankings can stem from differing understanding of those facts rather than differing moral standards. Not to mention the conflation of Honesty with Morality.
[+] [-] guizzy|11 years ago|reply
Another important missing fact: Was the Sherrif's offer time-limited? It makes a difference regarding whether or not he was coercing Maid Marion, whether she had an opportunity to discuss the proposition with Robin, and thus whether Robin is right in considering her actions a betrayal.
[+] [-] j2kun|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eldude|11 years ago|reply
Honestly, I think that's the point. You're told to forget your predispositions and be objective, and it's the degree to which you're able to and the biases that surface to fill the gaps of unknowns that this test is revealing.
[+] [-] mcv|11 years ago|reply
The sheriff's sin is that he can be bribed. He's corrupt.
Marion's sin is that she's willing to bribe to save those she loves.
Robin's sin is that he's jealous and possessive of those around him and doesn't appreciate the sacrifices they made for him.
I can't really see any fault in John. The only way I think you can see any fault in him is if you see Robin's jealousy and possessiveness as justified.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] banachtarski|11 years ago|reply
I'm quite the minority. My thoughts were as follows:
1. Maid Marion did something she didn't want in order to rescue a lover, and deservedly went with someone in the end. Understandable particularly after being the victim of unappreciation and abuse.
2. The sheriff imprisoned them for reasons that are not explained by the story. Can't fault him here. He allows himself to be bribed with sex which could be seen as a mercy in a certain light. More importantly, he was good on his word to release Robin and Little John, as opposed to abusing his power even further. Basically, he could have done far worse than he did.
3. Little John had the least to lose in all this, and as far as I can tell, hasn't done anything necessarily correct either. It's very easy to start off fulfilling the white knight role, but then have nothing to follow it up with. Neutral on his behavior and he ranks lower than the sheriff only because he had an easier decision to make.
4. Robin is the real cunt in this story from my perspective. Ingratitude coupled with abuse, and lack of empathy as to Marion's motivations.
The claims:
> Such an emphatic rejection of ready-made values is probably partly camouflage. You hate to be thought weak or insecure. You value honesty, and abhor hypocrisy.
> Men: Women are very much part of you life, and you are - or perhaps would like to be - quite ruthless, both with women and life in general.
... interesting.
*edit:formatting
Final edit:
I guess the underpinning difference between my perception of morality is that it's a bit relative based on the search space of decisions available. There are a ton of details omitted that would likely sway my decision a different way, however, so the solution set to this problem seems a bit unstable.
[+] [-] eemax|11 years ago|reply
RH's actions, on the other hand, while certainly misguided, are at least understandable, if he lives in a typical culture of masculinity, monogamy, and Victorian-era purity, where it's embarrassing to be rescued by a woman and shameful for women to have sex. He was probably feeling emasculated after being rescued by in such a fashion, and took out his anger on MM. (Which is bad, of course, but I don't think it's worse than what the sheriff did).
Finally, RH's "abuse" is left ambiguous, as opposed to the sheriff's which is very much explicit.
[+] [-] RodericDay|11 years ago|reply
> Maid Marion begged the Sheriff for their release, pleading her love for Robin. The Sheriff agreed to release them only if Maid Marion spent the night with him.
And somehow many of them end up with the impression that MM offered sex.
edit: I wasn't really replying to this post in particular, it just seemed like a good place to go about it. If you check the response for women for your ordering, by the way, the response is fairly positive.
[+] [-] jacobwcarlson|11 years ago|reply
My read was that he extorted sex, not agreed to a bribe. Had Maid Marion offered sex in exchange for Robin's freedom things might be different, but abusing a position of power to get sex is super-shady.
[+] [-] aidenn0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcoffland|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eemax|11 years ago|reply
My own ranking was MM, LJ, RH, S. Did anyone choose something different from that? Or seriously choose anything different than one of the four permutations above?
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|11 years ago|reply
There seems to be quite a bit more diversity here than that.
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|11 years ago|reply
We're supposed to leave all our preconceived notions behind, which means that Robin Hood & crew could be random people subject to the whims of an arbitrary and despotic sheriff. If thats the case, it's a much more difficult situation to judge.
For the record I chose the same as you.
[+] [-] RodericDay|11 years ago|reply
However, then I showed it to a bunch of people, and they started getting all sorts of crazy super-critical results. We started working through them, and I realized that in its simplicity the test was nevertheless tapping on some fairly outrageous opinions about the tolerability of power abuse, and the purity of women. And it stuck with me.
I think the only way to get a good result outside of the range you describe is to describe yourself as a woman, where it gives a positive spin to M>S>J>R (which I came around to as well).
[+] [-] peteretep|11 years ago|reply
If he's still irreconcilably pissed a few days later, well sure, screw him. But that he acts out initially - not great, but not that surprising. Shouldn't John be trying to help his friend save his relationship, rather than suddenly running off with Marion as soon as there's an opportunity?
Marion is unambiguously blameless (although running off with John without giving Robin a chance to clear his head seems flighty), and the Sheriff completely irredeemable - by any reasonable standard he coerced Marion in to having sex, and then derelicted his duty by releasing two people he'd imprisoned based on a bribe.
You're given the opportunity to read through the mini personality assessments for all answers - whoever wrote them has some severe projections and prejudices.
[+] [-] jacobwcarlson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GavinMcG|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] to3m|11 years ago|reply
But, I wondered about this too. In fact my answers were pretty much opposites, depending on which I prioritised. In the end I left the decision up to my gut, and I'm kind of glad I did, because the results had some nice things to say... about my gut, at least. Not sure where that leaves the rest of me.
(I found the author's willingness not to pull punches in their assessments admirable, in that he/she avoided any MBTI-/horoscope-style wooliness - but some of the results came across a little overly scathing. If there isn't actually one right answer, there are certainly sections of the result space they're clearly convinced are incorrect. But if its inventor is truly a marriage expert, I've no doubt they have their reasons.)
[+] [-] karmakaze|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanqui|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dietrichepp|11 years ago|reply
> Men: Perhaps you tend to idealize women and credit them with virtues they don't possess.
Swap Maid Marion and Robin Hood:
> Men: You are sexually inhibited with an underlying distrust of women.
This is crap. It seems putting Maid Marion in the top half means you credit women too much, and putting her in the bottom half means you discredit her too much.
[+] [-] vinceguidry|11 years ago|reply
Your proposed swap is really weird, placing Little John above Robin Hood but Robin Hood above Maid Marion. It indicates that you accepted that Little John is the real mensch in this situation, yet identify with Robin Hood's caddish behavior anyway.
The real decision here is whether Robin Hood is more honorable than the Sheriff. Ultimately the Sheriff was more honest to his baser desires, whereas Robin became irrationally controlling when confronted with a difficult situation.
If you thought Little John should have gotten the prize, then to be consistent, you have to put Robin in the loser's spot. Robin Hood chose wrongly when confronted with a moral dilemma in a way that traumatized the very person responsible for his freedom.
Giving Robin more credit than he deserves indicates that you identify with the feelings he had. They're the feelings of sexual inadequacy and possessiveness.
[+] [-] perfTerm|11 years ago|reply
I did Maid Marion, Little John, The sheriff, Robin hood and the answer was about spot on.
If I switched LJ and MM it was okay. Although I tend to think of myself as adventurous.
I can't even conceive of putting MM after RH though. Assuming no preconceived notions he just acted like a total jerk.
[+] [-] Bulk70|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staunch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mckee|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RestlessMind|11 years ago|reply
I did that with my girlfriend - both of us could make up our minds for the original tests, but when the genders were reversed, it took a long time for both of us to make sense of the situation and come up with the final ranking.
Very interesting to see how our brains are conditioned.
[+] [-] StavrosK|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zdw|11 years ago|reply
From this perspective, J did nothing wrong, and helped solve M's problems. M had good intentions, but hurt R, but had little choice. S forced himself on someone against their will as a form of ransom. R lost both his friend and lover as a result of his actions.
The ranking of S and R comes down to whether you think that S forcing himself on M was intended to hurt R, and if he knew what R would do to M as a result.
I wonder if this had been changed from imprisonment to death for R (and possibly J, possibly not) if R's reaction would have changed, or if not, if it would change the S/R ranking.
[+] [-] eldude|11 years ago|reply
For reference, I was JMSR.
[+] [-] vinchuco|11 years ago|reply
It's a 'morality' test. You should ask "which morality"?
If we agreed on the code of conduct (procedure) to use, we could agree on a score for each.
Notice that two persons with the same ranking could have come from different scores (i.e. person A: (25,13,7,1=JRMS) vs Ranking from person B: (-1,-7,-10,-40=JRMS)). And this is just in the one-dimensional morality score system.
The test is mapping an infinite set of scores to a set of 24 choices, and then using those choices to criticize the chooser.
[+] [-] captainmuon|11 years ago|reply
There are a bunch of cases where these two differ (for me), just think of the Snowden and Silkroad cases, or attitudes towards marriage or promiscuity, or towards religion.
[+] [-] siliconc0w|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mintplant|11 years ago|reply
"We would expect you to be a happy, well-balanced person who likes people and is liked by others. You question whether many conventional views on morality are valid under all circumstances."
[+] [-] mintplant|11 years ago|reply
The Sheriff, Robin Hood, Maid Mario, Little John (Female):
"Women: If you really believe this is the right order, you baffle us completely."
[+] [-] mintplant|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|11 years ago|reply
Marion bribed the sheriff. The sheriff got bribed. Robin is an asshole. John an opportunist.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thoughtsimple|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yarou|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wickawic|11 years ago|reply
To the point of your comment though, I don't understand why anyone would think that applying scientific principles to humans and human interaction is any less valid a use of our time than any other application of the same methods.