PrepTest 131, Section 1, Question 25
On average, corporations that encourage frequent social events(29 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AThe great majority(23 more words not shown)
- BCorporations that have(21 more words not shown)
- CThe EZ Corporation(13 more words not shown)
- DFrequent social events(19 more words not shown)
- EAt one time(30 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Do parties produce profits, or do profits pay for parties?
The corporations with frequent workplace social events have higher profits on average. That is an association worth noticing, but the order of explanation is still open. Perhaps profitable companies have extra money and enough breathing room to let employees celebrate during the workday.
Think about boating and wealth. If people who go boating tend to be richer, we should not immediately recommend boating as a way to get rich. People who already have money may simply be able to afford boats and leisure time. The same possibility applies to these corporations.
What we’re looking for
The proposal for EZ assumes that adding parties will raise profits. For a weakener, I would look for evidence that the money comes first and helps explain the events. Then the comparison between companies would not provide the proposed reason to expect a profit increase from more parties.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The great majority of companies holding frequent workplace events do so at least partly because they already have above-average profits. That supports the alternative explanation: financial success encourages social events. The argument instead uses the association to recommend social events as a cause of financial success. A does not prove that parties can never help, but it undermines the causal interpretation on which this recommendation relies.
- B
After-hours parties sometimes accompanying higher profits than daytime parties does not show that daytime parties fail to improve profits. Both could be beneficial compared with fewer parties, even if one arrangement sometimes does better. B compares two party schedules without resolving whether adding daytime events would help EZ.
- C
EZ already being above average does not mean its profits cannot increase. A profitable company that rarely holds parties could, in principle, become still more profitable after adding them. The conclusion predicts an improvement, not merely a move from below average to above average.
- D
Less time for assigned work is a plausible concern, but time is not the same as output or profit. Better morale or cooperation could conceivably offset the lost time. D identifies a possible cost without showing its net effect. A more directly challenges the explanation of the profit association the argument uses as evidence.
- E
The periods might not coincide. Perhaps EZ held more events from 2000 to 2010, while its period outside the most profitable group was from 1990 to 2000. E does not connect the party frequency with the lower profits. And not being among the most profitable companies would not itself show that the parties failed to improve EZ's own profits.
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