PrepTest 133, Section 1, Question 17
Psychologist: People tend to make certain cognitive errors(78 more words not shown)
The psychologist's argument does which(4 more words not shown)
- Aattempts to refute(16 more words not shown)
- Battempts to undermine(14 more words not shown)
- Cargues that an(18 more words not shown)
- Dargues that two(15 more words not shown)
- Eattempts to establish(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe getting the job you want won't make you as happy as you expect. That would be one example of misjudging an event's effect on future happiness, though the psychologist doesn't specify which errors people make.
Should we try to eliminate those mistakes? The psychologist says not necessarily. Perhaps an optimistic expectation keeps someone working toward a useful goal. Perhaps eliminating the tendency wouldn't be worth the cost. Those are possibilities, but the psychologist chooses a different kind of support: an analogy with vision.
Parallel lines can appear to converge. Yet the psychologist says it would be unreasonable to have your eyes and visual cortex surgically restructured just to remove that appearance. The comparison suggests that noticing an error doesn't automatically make fixing it the right action.
What we’re looking for
I'm not sure the two situations are similar enough to settle what we should do about predictions of happiness. But the question asks what the argument does, not whether the comparison proves its point. We can recognize the method: use a case where correcting an apparent error would be inappropriate to support the possibility that another correction is inappropriate too.
Working the answers
- A
Nobody claims a particular event is inevitable and then disproves that by presenting a different possible event. The issue is whether people should try to eliminate a tendency. The eye-surgery example is a comparison about what to do, not an alternative event offered against a prediction of inevitability.
- B
The psychologist accepts that people make the cognitive errors. The argument doesn't dismantle a theory by identifying a false assumption behind it. It questions whether we should respond by eliminating the tendency, using the vision example as support.
- CCorrect
The action under discussion is trying to remove our tendency to misjudge future happiness. The corresponding action is surgery to remove a misleading visual appearance. The psychologist says the surgery would be unreasonable and uses that comparison to argue that changing the other tendency might also be inappropriate. The two actions and the comparison between them all fit C.
- D
Similarity is being used to support a recommendation; it isn't the conclusion the psychologist is trying to establish. D also says the same action would be reasonable in both cases. The argument's point is that a corrective action might not be appropriate, with the surgery described as unreasonable.
- E
The psychologist doesn't first establish a broad rule and then apply it to a specific action. The support is a particular visual example that is compared with the cognitive tendency. We might summarize the suggested lesson as 'not every error needs fixing,' but the author reaches the recommendation through the analogy, not by first proving that general rule.
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