Q2 - In a study of honesty conducted

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Evaluate

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Most of the folks that got the extra buck were behaving dishonestly. Premise: Few people who got an extra buck returned it.

Answer Anticipation:
Evaluate questions are similar to Strengthen and Weaken questions, so you want to begin by ID'ing the gap in reasoning and thinking about what could fill it. Here, one might wonder whether those who got the extra dollar even knew it.

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
(A) If the answer to this question is yes, the argument is strengthened because it proves those who got the extra buck knew it and still chose not to return it, thereby behaving dishonestly. If the answer is no, the argument is weakened, because those who got the extra buck may not have noticed, and were therefore not behaving dishonestly when they failed to return it. This is a surefire sign that answer choice A is correct, because any way the cookie crumbles, answering this question helps you evaluate the strength of the argument.

(B) If the answer to this questions was 99%, would that impact the strength of the argument? What if the answer was 1%? In either case, the argument would still have the same gaps in reasoning we spotted in our prephrase, so this won't help us evaluate the argument.

(C) No matter how you answer this question, it doesn't impact the argument, because the argument is only about the honesty or dishonesty of the observed behavior, not about where each individual falls on the honesty spectrum.

(D) If the answer to this question is yes, perhaps those who returned the dollar were doing so not out of their gallant sense of right and wrong, but rather because they didn't want to get caught. Be that as it may, they were still behaving honestly, even if their motivation for doing so wasn't pure. Since this doesn't help us assess whether or not the behavior itself was honest or dishonest, it doesn't help us evaluate the argument.

(E) This question deals with a whole different experiment! No matter how you answer this question, it doesn't impact the argument.

Takeaway/Pattern:
The correct answer for an Evaluate question will typically be presented in the form of a question that can both strengthen and weaken the argument, depending on how it's answered. For answers that pose a yes/no question, one response should strengthen and the other weaken. For answers that pose a different kind of question (like B), try out responses to the question that are opposites.

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