PrepTest 158, Section 2, Question 23
Journalist: Drivers of sport utility vehicles correctly tend(70 more words not shown)
The journalist's reasoning most closely(8 more words not shown)
- AWhen people believe(32 more words not shown)
- BThe development of(23 more words not shown)
- CPeople generally take(35 more words not shown)
- DPeople generally exercise(18 more words not shown)
- EAvoiding serious harm(22 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Feeling protected can change how carefully someone behaves. That's the pattern the journalist sees in the SUV example: drivers believe they face less danger from a crash, so they take less care to avoid one.
The journalist then applies that idea to cancer. If a powerful cure reduces the feared consequences, people might become less careful about smoking or sun exposure. I can see the proposed connection, although I'd still wonder whether people make driving decisions and health decisions in the same way. The analogy needs a common feature that makes the comparison work.
What we’re looking for
The question asks which principle the reasoning follows. So set aside whether the prediction will actually happen and describe the general pattern behind it. My first thought is that the journalist extends a pattern of human behavior from one setting to another. The answer needs to identify the relevant pattern, not just mention cars, disease, or risk.
Working the answers
- A
This describes people choosing among several protective measures and using only the one they think works best. The journalist doesn't say SUV drivers compare several options or that cancer patients will rank competing precautions. The point is a change in risky behavior after protection becomes available, not a choice of the single best protective measure.
- BCorrect
Protection from harmful consequences can make people less careful to avoid the behavior that produces them. An SUV reduces occupants' injury risk, and the drivers become less careful. A powerful cancer cure would reduce the danger associated with getting the disease, and the journalist predicts less care about behaviors that increase that risk.
B gives the shared mechanism that makes the two examples part of the same reasoning. The protection needn't make anyone completely safe. The claim is that reducing the feared consequences can reduce caution.
- C
This contrasts likely serious injury with a belief that a behavior will do no harm at all. But reduced risk isn't zero risk. The passage doesn't say SUV drivers think crashes are harmless or that cancer cures remove every consequence of risky behavior. C also misses the specific change in caution caused by a new form of protection.
- D
The risks aren't unknown. Smoking, excessive sun exposure, and careless driving are treated as risky activities. What changes is the available protection from their consequences. A contrast between known and unknown risk doesn't describe that change.
- E
This ranks people's concern about serious harms against their willingness to accept lesser harms. The journalist doesn't argue that lesser harms lose out to unrelated desires. The reasoning concerns how protection from a harm changes people's behavior, which B states directly.
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