Q14 - Psychologist: Most people's blood pressure

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Increases in blood pressure while talking result from the psychological stress of communicating rather than from the physical exertion of speech production.

Premises: Extroverted people experience lesser blood pressure increases while speaking than do introverted people, for whom speaking is more stressful.

Answer Anticipation:
What's the connection between stress and blood pressure? We know what it is in the real world, but the argument didn't establish this explicitly. So, a bridge that connects stress and blood pressure would help this argument. And sure, speaking is more stressful for the introverted, so that COULD explain why their blood pressure increases more. But there could be other explanations, too. A defender answer that rules out an alternative explanation would be also a good candidate.

Correct answer:
D

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Who cares? This doesn't help us connect stress to blood pressure, and it doesn't differentiate between the extroverts and the introverts in a way that would rule out alternative explanations for their difference in fluctuation.

(B) Hmm… this connects stress and blood pressure, but it does it in a weird way. I need a bridge that says more stress causes greater rise blood pressure. This tells us that a lower starting point for blood pressure will cause a greater rise in blood pressure under stress. That's too narrow! Unless we know that the introverts have a lower starting blood pressure than the extroverts, we can't apply this generality to our particular comparison. Eliminate!

(C) So what? Sensing the rise in blood pressure is way outside the scope of this argument. Plus, it's so narrow, applying only to introverts without chronically high blood pressure.

(D) Intriguing… at first this might seem out of scope because it's discussing signing, not speech. But if it's true that hand motion causes no increase in blood pressure, whereas signing does, it stands to reason that it's the communication, not the physical exertion, that's raising the blood pressure. That lines up perfectly with the conclusion, so even though it doesn't match our prephrase, it's a strong contender. Working wrong-to-right allows me to pick this one confidently after eliminating the other four choices.

(E) Out of scope. We don't have any information about how chronically high blood pressure or blood pressure medicine impacts these fluctuations. Eliminate!

Takeaway/Pattern:
Working wrong-to-right helped us choose D by process of elimination, even though it didn't match our prephrase. This is a common scenario! The arguments in Strengthen, Weaken and even Necessary Assumption questions will sometimes lead to some very clear prephrases. That's great! What's not so great is when those prephrases don't show up in the answer choices! Don't be swayed. The test writers do this on purpose to test whether you have tunnel vision. Evaluate each answer on its own merit, and eliminate because it doesn't do what it needs to do, not because it doesn't match your prephrase.

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