PrepTest 120, Section 1, Question 16
Essayist: Many people are hypocritical in that they(60 more words not shown)
The essayist's statements, if true,(8 more words not shown)
- AThe existence of(11 more words not shown)
- BThe existence of(11 more words not shown)
- CThe existence of(11 more words not shown)
- DThe hiding of(19 more words not shown)
- EThere is no(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
According to this essayist, hypocrisy encourages people to improve whether it gets exposed or not. That's a surprisingly optimistic account. Let's follow both routes. When someone is exposed as pretending to be better than they are, embarrassment motivates that person and others to try to improve. When the hypocrisy stays hidden, people think they're surrounded by good people, and that impression motivates them to try to be good too. The explanation changes, but the common result is an effort to behave better.
What we’re looking for
We're asked what the statements most strongly support, so we should work within that account even if we're skeptical about how people actually respond to embarrassment. My prediction is the shared result: hypocrisy can encourage efforts to be good whether or not it is exposed. Don't turn encouragement to try into a guarantee that everyone actually becomes better.
Working the answers
- A
The essayist doesn't say hypocrisy makes people conclude that nobody is morally blameless. In the unexposed case, it encourages the belief that most people are good. The passage focuses on motivation to improve, not a universal judgment that everyone has moral faults.
- BCorrect
Making efforts to live by moral standards expresses the idea of trying to be good. Both situations support it: exposure motivates improvement through embarrassment, while concealment motivates improvement through the impression that other people are good. B captures that shared effect without requiring actual success or comparing which route works better.
- C
This points toward worse behavior. The essayist describes people being encouraged to try to be better, not being encouraged to lapse because other people are hypocritical. That might be another possible story, but it isn't the one we're given.
- D
Both hiding and exposing hypocrisy are described as sources of motivation. We have no comparison of their strength. Knowing that both can help doesn't tell us which does more to encourage good behavior.
- E
We haven't compared exposing hypocrisy with every other possible motivator. A reward or some other influence could be stronger for all the passage tells us. Describing one source of motivation doesn't establish it as the strongest.
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