Reading Comprehension

PT10 · S3 · P4 · Q22 Civil Rights Movement Theories

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Years after the movement to obtain civil rights for black people in the United States made its most important gains, scholars are reaching for a theoretical perspective capable of clarifying its momentous developments.

Topic

Theories explaining the causes of the civil rights movement and the challenges in evaluating their validity.

Framework

Present Debate (with some Challenge Position, as political theorists critique classical theories)

Main Point

Scholars debate several classical psychological theories to explain why the civil rights movement arose, but these theories are criticized for oversimplifying complex motivations, and empirical evidence can be made to support any of them, making it difficult to test which—if any—is correct. (The most valuable sentences for encapsulating the main point appear in Paragraph 4: Also, Paragraph 5: )

P1: Search for Explanations

Scholars are still trying to figure out the best theory to explain the impressive achievements of the civil rights movement, and these discussions involve both psychologists and political theorists.

P2: Surveying Classical Theories

The author introduces three main classical psychological theories—rising expectations, relative deprivation, and J-curve—all of which connect social unrest to some unusual social or economic strain for black Americans before the movement.

P3: Detailing Each Classical Theory

Each theory gets explained in more detail: "rising expectations" says that progress just made people want more; "relative deprivation" says blacks didn't gain enough in comparison to whites; "J-curve" says things got worse after improving for a while, prompting protest.

22.

It can be inferred from the passage that the classical theory of social movement would not be appropriately applied to an annual general election because such an election

may focus on personalities rather
Bad Match
Classical theory isn't revolving around politics rather than personalities. It's fine if something focuses on personalities. A cult of personality, like Martin Luther King, Jr., could be the unusual condition that led to unrest.
8% picked this
Correct
is not provoked primarily by
Why this is right
This is getting at our prediction, that classical theory needs to link an "unusual condition" to the "creation of unrest", and an annual general election happens every year, so it's not an unusual condition.
Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
70% picked this
may be decided according to
Bad Match
The fact that the outcome of an election depends on the psychological needs of the voters doesn't pose any direct clash with "unusual condition" or "generation of unrest". The psychological needs of the voters could very well be an unusual condition or reflect unrest.
10% picked this
may not entail momentous developments
Too Weak
The fact that the outcome of an election may not be momentous doesn't give a strong reason why you wouldn't apply classical theory to an election. Maybe this suggests that not all elections are interesting enough to qualify as worthy of a classical theorist's explanation. If they don't have momentous developments, then did they really have any "unusual condition" or "generation of unrest". But this is weaker than the correct answer. This might help us say that sometimes it wouldn't be appropriate to apply classical theory to a general election, but the correct answer makes it feel more like a fundamental/categorical wrong idea to apply classical theory to a general election.
9% picked this
actually entails two or more
Word Salad
An annual general election entails 2+ distinct social movements? Huh? It does? Why would we say an annual general election always comes with at least two distinct social movements? Even if we thought elections always come with at least two distinct political parties involved (which isn't actually the case), political parties aren't "social movements".
3% picked this

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