Q24 - Judicial punishment's power to deter

[jennifer]

Can someone please explain the process for sucessfully answering this problem. I was able to quickly eliminate, B, D, AND E.

[noah]

The first step is to boil down the stimulus. Here we have this:

X is related Y and Z. Sometimes, Y is too much and it causes a problem. So, increasing Y can weaken X.

Then we look for mismatches in conclusion, premise and linkages. Conclusion and premise mismatches are easiest to spot, so we'll start with those, and bust out our linkage magnifying lens if we need to. Let's take a look:

(A) matches! Academic success is related to quality and time. Sometimes time is too much, and it causes a problem for success.

(B) conclusion: iffy since we switch to "the most dangerous"

premise: we're missing the two components that lead to something

(C) conclusion: (C) has a conditional statement in it - a strong mismatch; and it is based on an increase - a weak mismatch

premise: we're missing the two components that lead to something

(D) conclusion: this conclusion starts by limiting the audience to a certain group - strong mismatch; it's missing a statement that something can lead to something diminishing - strong mismatch

premise: it has the two factors, but then we don't see what happens if one factor increases - strong mismatch.

(E) conclusion: refers to improving a situation - weak mismatch

premise: we're missing the two components that lead to something

It turns out we didn't even need to look for linkage issues. That's how to speed up on matching questions.

I hope that helps.