Q17 - When a chain of service stations began applying

by **ohthatpatrick** Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:50 pm

Question Type:
Inference (most supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
$2 / gallon + $0.25 surcharge for credit card = people angry.
$2.25 / gallon - $0.25 discount for cash = people happier.

Answer Anticipation:
Seems customers would rather feel like they're "missing out on a discount" than "getting penalized by a surcharge".

BEWARE: extreme wording.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Usually? Also, the rest of this doesn't match the conversation.

(B) Maybe? (ultimately no) "Sometimes" is weak. This conversation is about perceived fairness. Did the two different systems deal with "whether it benefits them personally"? Kind of. I'd be more inclined to say "perceptions of fairness depend on whether a policy PUNISHES them personally".

(C) Usually? Also, the rest of this doesn't match the conversation. In both cases, the people are considering financial issues, but they're only getting emotional with the first policy.

(D) Often? Also, people DID change their mind about an issue in our story, but we have no language to support that "the price of gas" does not make a significant difference to their lives.

(E) YES! Loveable "sometimes". This definitely matches the conversation, since credit card users were getting charged $2.25 / gallon in either situation, but they evaluated the situation differently based on how it was presented to them.

Takeaway/Pattern: When we are told a little story and asked to support a generalization, it's always dangerous to pick something more amped up then "sometimes" / "could" / "not always", since we're only hearing about one phenomenon, so we don't know its rarity or frequency. (B) was tempting, but the essence of the story was that people were angry when they felt like they were being 'punished' for using a credit card. When we went from pricing model 1 to pricing model 2, we didn't change "whether the policy benefited credit card users personally" (since it would cost them $2.25 / gallon either way).

#officialexplanation