PrepTest 113, Section 4, Question 3
An instructor presented two paintings to a class.(79 more words not shown)
The statements above, if true,(8 more words not shown)
- AMost of the(19 more words not shown)
- BNone of the(10 more words not shown)
- CEach of the(12 more words not shown)
- DIn judging the(19 more words not shown)
- EHad the instructor(26 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Would the students prefer the painting, or the story about the painting?
Imagine giving someone a glass of wine and describing it as expensive. That description might affect how good they think it tastes. It wouldn't establish that the wine is actually better. The museum description makes me wonder about the same possibility here.
After the first class chooses the first painting, either explanation is still available: perhaps they like what they see, or perhaps the prestigious history influences them. Then the instructor reverses the descriptions for a different class, and everyone in that class chooses the painting now described as having hung in prestigious museums. The paintings and their order stay the same; the favored painting follows the prestigious description.
What we’re looking for
That is evidence of influence. We're asked what is most strongly supported, so my prediction is that what the students were told affected their judgments. We should keep it modest. These are different classes, not the same people changing their minds, and the results don't tell us everything either group would think about art.
Working the answers
- A
Choosing one painting over another doesn't mean disliking the one you didn't choose. A student could like both while preferring one. A then goes further still, claiming most students would dislike any work they attributed to an unknown amateur. Two comparative judgments don't support that sweeping rejection.
- B
We don't know which descriptions were true. The instructor changing the labels doesn't establish that every claim was false. Nor should we assume an amateur's work could never hang in a prestigious museum. We can examine the influence of the descriptions without settling their accuracy.
- C
The students judged two paintings. We can't extend that to each student's opinion of most paintings in any prestigious museum. Some might like only a small portion of a museum's collection. The limited comparison here gives us no reason to rule that out.
- DCorrect
Some students were affected by what they were told. Each class unanimously favored the painting given the prestigious description, even though that was a different painting in each presentation. That pattern supports the idea that the description mattered.
D doesn't require us to claim that every student ignored the art or that the paintings were objectively equal. It makes the limited inference our reading suggested: the supplied history influenced at least some judgments.
- E
We haven't seen a class judge the paintings without descriptions. Perhaps those students would strongly prefer one painting; perhaps they would divide; perhaps they would see the paintings as roughly equal. The experiment described doesn't establish that last outcome. An influence from the labels doesn't tell us exactly what judgments would have been without them.
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