Well, I certainly wouldn’t. If the question doesn’t allow you to assume that you have no risk of being injured or killed, then I might have to think twice about my previous answer.
Actually, my first choice would be Beth, as you’d have the potential to save two lives.
Me too. In terms of the question, I think Billy should have a more debilitating disease.
My initial problem with the question is that in a tragic accident scenario, you don’t know the histories of anyone, so I would be bothered by this question right at the start. I would alter your scenario enough so that you would need to know the histories of the people; as it is written, all I could go by would be the physical appearances of each person; maybe that is the psychology you want to test for? It makes all the histories irrelevant, though.
Looking at them just physically, the first obvious choice is the boy, but if he obviously has Down’s Syndrome, he become less of an obvious choice. The obvious choice to not save is the 89 year old woman. Taking the boy and the old lady out of the equation, the rest are all more or less equal because you can’t see pregnancy at two months.
First of all, thank you all for your replies!
I think many of you are right that I have made Billy perhaps the easiest, safest option to choose. Maybe making him older, or perhaps with a different psychological disorder would make him a less obvious choice. And having Beth further along in her pregnancy is not a bad idea.
To answer a few questions:
What does this have to do with psychology?
- This is the final exam, and during the course we studied facets of each of those individuals lives; addictions, illnesses (both mental and physical) as well as research on treatments and statistical data on the success rates.
For instance, they should know that Billy does indeed have a chance to lead a fulfilling life, living independently with only perhaps minimal supervision. They should know that there are treatment facilities for heroin addicts and the chances Alan has to remain clean. We talked about terminal illness and the effect not only on the person with the disease (Jack), but his family as well. We found out that more and more people like Mildred are living happy and relatively healthy lives well into their 100’s (one of the fastest growing segments of the population, especially for women). That with AZT the chances of Beth’s newborn being born HIV+ is very slight (fewer than 100 in the entire USA in one year) but there are dangers with fetal alcohol syndrome. We also discussed drug and therapy treatments for sexual offenders like Jerry and the statistics on the success rate over the years.
In other words, none of the individual cases is particularly hopeless, yet none of them have an easy path ahead. If my students can see there are pros and cons for saving each individual, then I would consider they got something out of this class. Prior to this course, they would never have considered saving many of those listed.
I have to prepare this test by Saturday, so if anyone has any further suggestions or comments, let me know!
And thanks again!