PrepTest 138, Section 2, Question 24
Studies have found that human tears contain many(36 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(11 more words not shown)
- Aoverlooks the possibility(23 more words not shown)
- Bconfuses a condition(26 more words not shown)
- Cfails to adequately(24 more words not shown)
- Dfails to adequately(14 more words not shown)
- Etakes for granted(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Are the hormones causing the stress, or is stress causing the body to produce the hormones?
Before that, there's a smaller jump worth noticing. Finding hormones in tears doesn't show that crying removes a significant quantity. Perhaps the tears carry away only a tiny fraction—say, one percent—of what is present in the body. The argument hasn't established the amount.
But even if we grant a substantial removal, we still need the causal connection. Removing something associated with stress will reduce stress only if that removal affects what is causing or maintaining the stress. If the hormones are merely a byproduct of being stressed, getting rid of some hormones needn't remove the stress that produced them.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, I'd look for that unsupported direction of explanation. The author moves from hormones being present during stress to treating their removal as a way to relieve it. We need a reason those hormones are a cause, not just something that accompanies the condition.
Working the answers
- A
Crying might reduce stress through some other mechanism, but that possibility doesn't directly expose the assumption about these hormones. The argument needs support for treating their presence as causal. Offering a different possible way for crying to help leaves that central inference unexamined.
- B
The author hasn't been given a condition that is required for stress and then treated meeting it as sufficient to create stress. The evidence concerns hormones found during stressful periods and in tears. The mistake is inferring a causal role from that association, not reversing a stated requirement.
- C
Two-way influence would still allow hormones to contribute to stress. If hormones increase stress and stress also increases hormones, removing hormones might still help interrupt that process. Our objection doesn't require proving that two-way influence is impossible. It's that the hormones might merely result from stress, without causing it. C preserves the causal contribution the argument needs instead of exposing the lack of support for it.
- D
The argument doesn't identify two separate factors that jointly cause a phenomenon and then confuse those factors. It identifies hormones associated with stress and assumes they cause it. We need to examine that claimed relationship, not separate two established joint causes.
- ECorrect
The substances are the hormones, and the condition is emotional stress. The argument takes their presence during the condition as a reason to treat them as its cause. That is broader than our specific suggestion that stress produces the hormones, but it captures the same unsupported leap. Unless the hormones contribute to causing or maintaining stress, removing them doesn't establish that crying reduces stress.
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