PrepTest 138, Section 2, Question 15
Psychologists recently conducted a study in which people(70 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AFor each photograph,(20 more words not shown)
- BOne's emotional disposition(6 more words not shown)
- CSome behaviors that(12 more words not shown)
- DIf there is(19 more words not shown)
- EThe people whose(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe people learned the same associations in different cultures.
The study gives us agreement: people from widely different cultures looked at each photograph and identified the same emotion. But why did they agree? A genetic predisposition is one possibility. Shared ways of learning to read faces are another. Different cultures could teach people to recognize a smile or a fearful expression in similar ways.
What we’re looking for
I'm accepting the responses and questioning the explanation for them. For the assumption question, we need the connection the author relies on: why does a behavior shared across widely different cultures indicate a probable genetic basis? Observing the agreement hasn't supplied that connection.
Working the answers
- A
The photographed person could be an actor posing an expression. People might reliably identify a sad face even if the actor was feeling perfectly happy when the picture was taken. The argument concerns associations between expressions and emotions, not whether the models actually felt the emotions they portrayed.
- B
Emotional disposition concerns a person's own emotional tendencies; the study concerns recognizing emotions in faces. Further, a genetic predisposition doesn't rule out cultural influence. The author doesn't need to deny every cultural effect on how people feel in order to claim a genetic contribution to recognizing expressions.
- C
Some widely shared behaviors could be culturally influenced. That can coexist with genetic influences, and those behaviors need not be the facial associations studied here. C doesn't provide the connection the author uses to infer a genetic predisposition from this cross-cultural agreement.
- DCorrect
This supplies the assumption behind the inference: a behavior shared by people from widely disparate cultures probably has a genetic predisposition behind it. Identifying the emotions in the photographs is the shared behavior; the conclusion gives it a genetic basis. Notice that D says 'probably' and 'predisposition.' It doesn't require genes to determine the behavior completely or culture to have no influence.
- E
The important cultural variation is among the people identifying the expressions. The photographs could all show people from one culture while observers from many cultures associated the same expressions with the same emotions. The author doesn't need the photographed people themselves to come from different cultures.
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