PrepTest 147, Section 1, Question 7
Journalist: The new mayor is undeniably bold.(31 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AIntrospective people do(8 more words not shown)
- BPoliticians who make(11 more words not shown)
- CPeople who are(9 more words not shown)
- DPeople whose assertions(7 more words not shown)
- EPoliticians who are(7 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why couldn't an introspective person sound confident? Someone might think carefully about what they know, speak confidently on those subjects, and avoid taking positions on things they haven't figured out.
The journalist links the mayor's certainty and confidence to two judgments: he's bold, and he isn't introspective. Confidence and boldness may sound closely related, but we should still notice the connection being made. The second connection is especially questionable. Speaking with certainty doesn't by itself show that someone fails to reflect on their own thoughts.
What we’re looking for
For a required assumption, I'd be open to a choice connecting the confident assertions to either of those judgments. We need something the journalist relies on to move from how the mayor speaks to what kind of person he is.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The journalist needs to rule out people who are both introspective and utterly certain and confident in their assertions. Otherwise, the mayor could be one of those people, and his confident speech wouldn't establish that he lacks introspection. This answer supplies that exclusion: introspective people don't make assertions in this manner.
- B
The passage only says these assertions may make the mayor popular. It doesn't establish that they have made him popular, much less that confident assertions make every politician popular. More importantly, the argument about his lack of introspection doesn't depend on winning public approval. He could be unpopular and the journalist could still make the same claim about his personality.
- C
This connects boldness and confident speech, but in the wrong direction for the proposed inference. If the journalist uses the mayor's confident speech to support calling him bold, we need a connection from that speech to boldness. C instead tells us how bold people speak. Even if every bold person spoke confidently, people who weren't bold might also speak confidently. So hearing confident speech wouldn't settle whether the speaker was bold.
- D
This tells us about people whose assertions are uncertain and lack confidence. The mayor's assertions are expressly certain and confident. Knowing that uncertain speakers are introspective doesn't tell us whether confident speakers can be introspective too. The journalist needs to exclude that latter possibility, which is what A does.
- E
The journalist isn't explaining why a politician is unpopular, nor making a general claim about politicians who lack boldness. The mayor is described as bold, and his potential popularity is an aside. Whether other politicians' lack of boldness makes them unpopular does nothing to establish that this mayor lacks introspection.
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