Survey questions that miss the obvious answer

[Drakkith]

Was your dad a follower of Timothy Leary? :D

No idea.

 

[Danger]

No idea.

Then he probably was.

 

[Psinter]

Yup, teachers at middle school always tried to play us dumb with their psychological questions with unreal choices. Then they would literally force us to choose only one of the choices. I never answered anything. While they wasted their time doing that I was scribbling C code in my notebook or in my mind.

One question they one made:

If your best friend has a girlfriend/boyfriend and the fiancee is cheating on your best friend. Would you tell your best friend or keep it to yourself?

Those who answered they would tell their best friend got insulted by the teacher by saying that they are gossipers and that they shouldn't get involved with what is not of their business. That you shouldn't get involved in other people's lives.

Those who answered they would keep it to themselves where insulted as hypocrites for not telling the truth.

In the meanwhile I was working on an algorithm and didn't care.

 

[Simon Bridge]

Surveys where the questions are delivered rather than read usually have an unspoken option of "no answer" and maybe "other".
In most countries you always have the option to refuse to answer any question you like.

 

[symbolipoint]

Yup, teachers at middle school always tried to play us dumb with their psychological questions with unreal choices. Then they would literally force us to choose only one of the choices. I never answered anything. While they wasted their time doing that I was scribbling C code in my notebook or in my mind.

One question they one made:

If your best friend has a girlfriend/boyfriend and the fiancee is cheating on your best friend. Would you tell your best friend or keep it to yourself?

Those who answered they would tell their best friend got insulted by the teacher by saying that they are gossipers and that they shouldn't get involved with what is not of their business. That you shouldn't get involved in other people's lives.

Those who answered they would keep it to themselves where insulted as hypocrites for not telling the truth.

In the meanwhile I was working on an algorithm and didn't care.

The teacher was (I guess) trying to force students to think about difficult choices.

 

[Danger]

Yup, teachers at middle school always tried to play us dumb with their psychological questions with unreal choices..

I don't want to use up memory space with a full quote, but this is an excellent example coming from a direction that I wasn't expecting. I have to say that in my less than humble opinion, those teachers should be fried in their own fat. Pulling that kind of garbage on an adult is sadistic enough; subjecting a child to it is horrendous and possibly child-abuse in some jurisdictions. As disturbing as it is, I thank you for bringing it to light. It reminds me, bitterly, of my Southern Baptist 6^th grade teacher who convinced the students (except for the lone Atheist :D) that they would go to hell if they didn't do their homework correctly. (Of course, because I was the only Atheist in the county, she instructed them to beat the dang out of me at least once a week... the whole class, that is, not a fair one-on-one fight. That was when little Danny started morphing into Danger. To this day, I regret that she died of natural causes before I could get my hands around her throat.)
Although I originally had a comedic theme in mind when I started this thread, you have changed my outlook to the point that I would also like to learn of other manipulative rather than simply stupid questions.
Still, though, funny is better for the environment. I'm thinking that perhaps I should ask the Mentors to split this off into two separate threads; one for humour and one for serious social issues arising from stupid questions. I have no problem integrating the two, but some might find it disorienting.

 

[Dembadon]

...

e.g.: There's a 12 oz. beer glass on the bar with 6 oz. of beer in it. Some dip wants to play amateur psychologist and asks whether I'm an optimist who says that it's half full, or a pessimist who says that it's half empty. My response is always: "I'm a realist, you idiot! It's full. It's half-full of beer and half-full of air."

...

Engineer: "It's 200% of the required volume."

Edit: replied before seeing Vanadium and zooby's exchange.

Someone posted a list here once of about 50 answers like this one to this question; answers from many different perspectives. It was pretty funny.

I think it's this one:

http://www.businessballs.com/glass-half-full-empty.htm