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What do you call it when a person asks somebody a question when they know they'll criticise any answer regardless? For instance, a man asks you something like "If you were recruiting staff would you employ an ex-convict?". If you answer yes he says "Well that shows you don't care about security". But if you'd said no then the reply would have been "So you wouldn't give a person a second chance then?"

Mark R
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    How specific do you want your word to be? "asking a trick question", "trolling", "looking for a fight" all describe behaviors which are a superset of this one, but are not exclusive to it. – rumtscho Feb 17 '14 at 23:56
  • "Hazing" or "Ragging" – moonstar Feb 18 '14 at 08:50
  • Hmmm the questions asked for the question's sake are usually called rhetorical, and that term had once very negative connotation on SE (a close reason). Though it fits better FiddleFingers example, not yours. I'd just vote for "trolling". – Danubian Sailor Feb 18 '14 at 12:54
  • I'm not about the OP's original question implying criticism. I think the category "ex-convict" is too broad to jump to conclusions. I guess if the job were guarding money, then an ex-con who was convicted of theft would be a poor choice, but if I were hiring someone to dig ditches I wouldn't have a problem at all. A pedophile may not be the first choice for my Ice Cream trucks, but might do OK in the accounts department. Etc.
    BTW my favorite non-answerable question is, "Are you going to wear that?!"     – Engineer Feb 18 '14 at 02:01
  • Remind me not to frequent your accounts department with my children in tow!!!!! – David M Feb 18 '14 at 03:39
  • @ŁukaszL. A rhetorical question is one where you're not expecting any answer, so that's somewhat different. – David Richerby Feb 18 '14 at 19:18
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    I would call it a "Kobayashi Maru question," assuming my reader/listener has a cursory knowledge of Star Trek :D ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru ) :D When I looked on Wikipedia, I found the term "zugzwang," which is a chess term used to describe a situation where all possible moves lead to bad outcomes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang ) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-win_situation ) – David Schwartz Feb 18 '14 at 20:15
  • that would be called destroying the simpleton's dichotomy. it's actually a gift of wisdom. – Sam Feb 18 '14 at 22:29
  • The catch-all term for all of these answers is gathered under the logic term known as the fallacy of complex question. – Robusto Mar 20 '14 at 12:47
  • note that "Zugzwang" literally refers to the enforcement of the rule of having to make a move. The rule is mostly mentioned in a case where the other party would NOT want to move, but it holds for any move. – jank May 18 '16 at 20:13

11 Answers11

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I upvoted David's loaded question because it's a very common usage, but on reflection I realised that's not quite right for OP's context.

A loaded question is nearly always one that's asked in such a way as to force or encourage a particular answer (that the answerer might not give if the question were presented "fairly").

But a trick question is one where the questioner usually doesn't care what you answer - you'll be wrong no matter what you say. I don't normally cite Urban Dictionary, but here's their definition...

An inquiry having no correct answer, or one asked for the sole purpose of starting controversy or eliciting certain responses. Basically, a no-win situation.

Girlfriend asks: "Do I look fat in this?" (trick question)

If you tell her she does, she'll throw a fit and tell you how insensitive you are. If you tell her she doesn't she'll call you a liar and go off on a tangent about how "all men are the same" or some nonsense like that.

My favourite trick question is "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?", but David's "When polar bears eat penguins, do they get indigestion?" is neat too. But they're both slightly different to the example cited above (that has two wrong answers, ours don't really have "answers" at all).

FumbleFingers
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    I agree with you that the fit is not exact (and have up voted your response in kind). I believe I said as much in my answer. Trick question is a good fit, too. Although, I don't know that it implies the same damned if you do, damned if you don't. For instance, a trick question could be: "When polar bears eat penguins, do they get indigestion?" The answer, of course, being "There are no polar bears native to the Southern Hemisphere, and no penguins native to the Northern Hemisphere." – David M Feb 17 '14 at 22:39
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    There are no kangaroos native to the Northern Hemisphere, but a lot seem to get eaten by domestic dogs. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 17 '14 at 22:55
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    @David: Good point. But now I'm starting to wonder if OP himself has asked a loaded/trick question! I think you could reasonably say it's "loaded", in that it presupposes there's a single "unambiguously correct" answer. But quite often a loaded question can also be a trick question (even though the asker is steering you towards one particular answer, you're trapped because you know he'll criticise both that and the alternative). On top of which, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is obviously both loaded and trick. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 22:59
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    @Edwin: That's our fault for initially buying kangaroo steaks because we thought they would be an interesting novelty (and on paper, extra lean and healthy). First it turned out we didn't really like them, so we fed the leftovers to the dogs, which gave them a taste for it. Then all the Northern Hemisphere would-be-millionaire "kangaroo ranchers" realised it wasn't worth farming the roos they'd imported, so they let them escape. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 23:03
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    @EdwinAshworh Those damned kangaroos ... They won't stop beating my wife or giving my polar bear indigestion! – David M Feb 17 '14 at 23:05
  • My wife eats Penguins, and she's never been south of Morocco. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 17 '14 at 23:08
  • @EdwinAshworth I'm going to concede defeat on that one. I just hope they don't give her indigestion. – David M Feb 17 '14 at 23:09
  • @Edwin: I once tried to p-p-p-pick up a penguin (empress, not emperor, obviously). But I think she was put off by my stuttering, 'cos she was having none of it. Not my fault! My teeth (and lips) were chattering in the cold! – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 23:22
  • I'd say a trick question is one which may indeed have a correct answer, but it is not one of the choices given. (In the ex-con case, "yes" or "no" would be the obvious choices, but the correct answer would be neither of the above, but would rather more depend on job and the crime in question.) It does not necessarily imply that there is no correct answer, just that it's not obvious. – Darrel Hoffman Feb 18 '14 at 14:46
  • @DavidM, actually there are penguins native to the Northern Hemisphere (or at least so close to the equator that they occasionally wander there): the Galapagos penguin. Of course, this is not within the normal range for polar bears. Anyhow, penguins and polar bears often do live in close proximity, in zoos, so it's not inconceivable that a polar bear has managed to chomp on a penguin at some point in the past. – tobyink Feb 18 '14 at 16:24
  • @Darrel: Well, we can split hairs over whether any specific instance is a loaded, trick, unanswerable, misframed, etc. question. But at the end of the day those first two are by far the most common idiomatic usages. Arguably, typical trick questions are simply a subset of loaded questions, in that they're framed in such a way as to invite a yes/no response, even though that's invariably the/a "wrong" way to look at it. – FumbleFingers Feb 18 '14 at 17:16
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    Thats a great answer and all, but does David know you are wrong? – n00b Feb 18 '14 at 18:21
  • A digression on loaded questions: "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" has a correct answer. "No.". If one has never beat their wife, surely they cannot stop. Also: "When polar bears eat penguins, do they get indigestion?" This is kind of asking if the logical statement polar bear eats pengiun => polar bear gets indigestion is true. All conditionals can be assigned truth value. – Cruncher Feb 18 '14 at 18:32
  • Actually, there is one way to answer that perennial question, "Does my bum look big in this?" the answer is: "Yes, because you are sexier with a big bum/ass than with a skinny flat one." Try it out next time, and report back. :-) – Mari-Lou A Feb 18 '14 at 20:08
  • @Mari-LouA Whenever I've been asked question of that kind, I've always made a statement in response rather than yes or no. "I think it looks great on you!" or "I like that one, but I prefer the blue one" if we were shopping, for example. – David Schwartz Feb 18 '14 at 20:23
  • @Cruncher If you start using logic to review the answers given to question traps, then political punditry is in trouble! – David M Feb 18 '14 at 23:07
  • @tobyink Yes. Conceivably, there has been a penguin related case of ursine gastrointestinal distress. And, I concede the point on the native range of penguins migrating across the hemispheric border on occasion. As a frequent pedant myself, I respect your contribution to the argument. – David M Feb 18 '14 at 23:12
  • @DavidM so textbook, it's Wikipedia's example. – Patrick M Feb 18 '14 at 23:20
  • @PatrickM I actually deleted that comment, because Fumble notes it in another comment that I overlooked on the mobile platform. – David M Feb 18 '14 at 23:58
  • @Patrick: It was around long before Wikipedia. I'm not saying it's the oldest trick question in the book, but it used as an example of a "sharpster lawyer" technique back in 1899. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '14 at 00:06
  • @FumbleFingers that's such a cliched example. I haven't found any instance on the internet so far where the question isn't asked by a female. Just for fun, can you change girlfriend to boyfriend please? I know it comes from another website, but still you can put a * and edit it. – user13107 Feb 19 '14 at 03:12
  • @user13107: Hey! Lighten up! It's just a stereotype - which works because we all understand the context, not because we agree with it. I don't really approve of making "significant" changes to cited material in the first place, but your suggestion would just cause people to be diverted into thinking "I wonder why s/he used that unusual example?" instead of simply using the illustrative example to better understand the nature of a trick question. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '14 at 13:21
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I would call that a "loaded question."

A loaded question is one where the person asking it has an agenda behind it. While there are other cases where a loaded question is the appropriate term, I believe this to be one type.

Of course, one can say that traditionally a loaded question has some information that forces the other person to agree to unsavory terms to answer the question. See here

But, I would still characterize this as a subtype of loaded question.

Essentially the asker of this type of question is only asking it as a means of embarrassing the other person. Hence, my characterization.

It does not give any name to this type of question, but there is an excellent discussion of the usage in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Then he went away from the door and Wells came over to Stephen and said:

— Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?

Stephen answered: — I do.

Wells turned to the other fellows and said:

— O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed. The other fellows stopped their game and turned round, laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said: — I do not.

Wells said: — O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed.

They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar.

David M
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So now you have a choice.

You can strike a blow for evolving language and the insights new and vigorous young commentators offer, and show that you are not mired in stodgy tradition by checking David M's loaded question.

Or you can recognize the subtle distinctions offered by a seasoned veteran and not fall for the easy titillation of a flashy newcomer, by acknowledging FumbleFingers erudite trick question.

Sounds like a no win situation to me.

bib
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    +1 for the witty commentary! And you left out the fact that both @Fumblefingers and I up voted one another's answers in testimony that we each see merit in the other's. – David M Feb 18 '14 at 03:39
  • Why no win? You can always bounce back the question: "You're asking me if I'd hire a convict? Would you hire one?". – Pieter B Feb 18 '14 at 08:58
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    If you're up for some sort of position where you would need to make hiring decisions, bouncing back the question shows that you don't have confidence in yourself to make leadership decisions. – PeterL Feb 18 '14 at 15:52
  • I think this one is a loaded choice. In that link, native Cree can only choose one option (education, free hospital care, welfare, etc. or the bleak traditional existence in the bush). But users here can upvote both answers, so it's a *win-win* situation. (Or *win-win-win* if they upvote your answer too! :) – FumbleFingers Feb 18 '14 at 18:56
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    @FumbleFingers After thinking about it, my choices should have been You can show you're mired in stodgy tradition by rejecting David M ... or You can ignore the seasoned veteran .... But as you say, these are not really the only choices, because we run a kindlier gentler place than that. – bib Feb 18 '14 at 20:13
  • @bib: Me, you, and David are the only ones who can't make a "win X 3" out of this one, because we can only vote for the other two, not ourselves. (But I did upvote the question itself - so OP Mark wins as well, if that counts.) – FumbleFingers Feb 18 '14 at 22:02
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There is a term: a trap question.

http://sv.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trap%20question

anongoodnurse
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inspironen
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  • This is a synonym for trick question. The example quoted is a good example of the type of question, but I think this is not the standard usage of the term trap question. – David M Feb 19 '14 at 01:13
  • @DavidM While technically synonymous, I think that a trick question is widely viewed as light-hearted, almost asked as a joke. A trap question on the other hand implies malicious intent on the part of the asker. – Dryden Long Feb 19 '14 at 18:32
  • @DrydenLong Based upon my googling of trap questions, most of them came up with the term "Female Trap Questions." And, the examples given were that of "Do I look fat?" type questions. In these cases, I think you'd be hard pressed to imply a malicious intent on the part of the asker. But, rather, an underlying insecurity that makes the question a trap because the asker doesn't actually know what answer they would like to hear! This differs from the OP whose asker is deliberately bating you to take the wrong step. – David M Feb 19 '14 at 19:02
  • @DavidM Yes, Google's results do tend to lean more towards the "Do I look fat?" type of questions, but I would still argue that a trap question has less to do with insecurity and more to do with "setting a trap" for the person being asked. I would say that the motives behind asking "Do I look fat?" determine whether it is a trap question or fishing for compliments. To me a trap is something that is deliberately set, with the intent of forcing the target into a position, whether it be physically, emotionally or mentally. – Dryden Long Feb 19 '14 at 19:14
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As I've been answering people's comments, I've noticed myself using a phrase over and over again.

Question Trap

I do not claim this to be current or common parlance. But, in fact, I think I will sit here and begin the coining process!

I acknowledge the similarity to the term trap question, but I've chosen this word order to reflect that it is a trap that takes the guise of a question.

It is adequately descriptive of the intent and process going on here. And, best of all as the coiner, I can set whatever terms I choose for its usage. Hence, I state it to be an all-inclusive term that comprises, but is not limited to, the subset of both Trick and Loaded Questions.

And, for all who question my motivation as a fame whore, I will set this answer to community wiki status!

David M
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  • @FumbleFingers I think I may have hit upon a compromise! – David M Feb 19 '14 at 00:10
  • It has actually been used a few times before, but in OP's context I think it's really just an unusual inversion of @inspironen's far more common trap question. Having said that, your version works nicely in the case of the teacher who would occasionally *lay a "question trap"* for his unthinking pupils. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '14 at 01:03
  • (congrats on passing the 1000 rep point, btw. You'll gain some extra "privileges" from that, but I look forward to seeing you get to 2000 soon enough - then you'll be able to help out with the "minor edits" housekeeping that nobody can be bothered to do enough of) – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '14 at 01:07
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    @FumbleFingers Thanks! I'm around 3300 on gaming.stackexchange.com, so I'm familiar with the process. I must say I've enjoy this site quite a bit! The verbal sparring alone is priceless! – David M Feb 19 '14 at 01:12
  • What I love about SO is the built-in 5 minutes grace for comment edits. I don't think there's really an English equivalent to l'esprit d'escalier (the straight translation is just lame), but SO does at least allow us to polish our turds before they're locked down for posterity. I've been here a while now, but I still come across gems from years ago, as well as the current stuff (H2O2 being a cracker today!) – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '14 at 01:34
  • @FumbleFingers The real question is where do we get our hands upon lion dung. I can't imagine that the zoo just hands it out! (I'm a patron donor of the Bronx Zoo, and they've never once offered!) But, I agree I've found some really fascinating things on here. It's like a living crossword puzzle! – David M Feb 19 '14 at 04:08
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In casual usage, you could call it a gotcha question, although that can encompass both trick questions (there is no correct answer because the question makes incorrect assumptions), obscure questions (What is the name of the Lieutenant Governor of the tenth-largest US state?), and the kind of question you describe.

This was made famous by Sarah Palin a few years ago and many politicians since have complained about them. This article gives a good run-down: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/19/politicians-complain-about-gotcha-questions-but-what-exactly-are-they/

The most prominent example is a very close fit to what you have described. The question to Palin "What do you read?" could only serve to harm her: no one would be persuaded to vote for her ticket however she answered, and whatever the answer there would be someone who could find fault with it.

WinnieNicklaus
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It sounds like the scenario you are describing is the common phrase "Catch 22", aka "damned if you do, damned if you don't". This is popularized by the novel of the same name ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22). Essentially there is no right answer.

nullspace
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    A Catch-22 is a logical implosion more than a trap of a question. The example from Heller of flying missions: " a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions." – David M Feb 19 '14 at 00:02
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"If you were recruiting staff would you employ an ex-convict?" could also be considered a Rhetorical question, that is, a question with no intended answer. The questioner could then continue with something along the lines of "Of course not, because ...etc." As the question was not intended to be answered any answer given could possibly be criticized.

J J
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    It could be a rhetorical question, but it isn't in the OP's context. They were describing a situation where the questioner waits for an answer, only to take issue with whatever answer is given - not a situation where the questioner isn't expecting an answer. – starsplusplus Feb 18 '14 at 10:30
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I've always described situations like this as being 'a cleft stick' or 'caught between a rock and a hard place', especially when you are placed in an unanswerable dilemma.

arbitrarychoice
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I think the term describing a question which elicits an answer that provokes an argumentive statement from the questioner is 'argumentative'. This is like the cross-examiner at a trial whose question is objected to by the opposing counsel: 'Your honor, the question is argumentative', i.e., inducing the witness to engage in argument with the cross-examiner rather than stating facts.

user3847
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I always thought this type of question was, 'Begging the Question'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

The answer is included in the premise, so he can criticize it no matter what you say.

Ryan
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    In that case you always thought wrong. To beg the question has two meanings - originally, to present an argument which presupposes the truth of the very proposition it's intended to prove, and latterly and more popularly, to present an argument that prompts your audience to seek answers to another (more loosely related) question. – FumbleFingers Feb 18 '14 at 19:06