PT151 S2 Q14 ExplanationResearcher: People are able to tell

Answer choices, explained

1. A

   Weakens (if anything)1% picked this

   People are generally unable to judge the dominance of bonobos, which are also primates, by looking

   Since the author is spinning this yarn about a generalized primate ability to look at a picture of a fellow primate and diagnose extroversion / dominance, it would seemingly only hurt the argument to talk about one primate not being able to detect such a state out of another primate.

   1%
2. B

   No Impact2% picked this

   People are able to identify a wider range of personality traits from pictures of other people than

   It's a pretty obvious statement that humans will see more personality traits in pictures of humans than in pictures with chimpanzees. Not only do humans have a wider range of personality traits to begin with (stemming from the increased complexity of our mental lives), but humans primarily live with other humans, so we also have greater familiarity with human faces. An answer that tells us a common sense fact can't really add anything new to our understanding. Some might even interpret this as weakening - if our photo-diagnosing ability is all about primate biology, then we should probably be able to perform similarly well with any primate. If our photo-diagnosing ability is all about an ability we acquired through culture, then we would do better with primates from our own culture (i.e. humans).

   2%
3. C

   Correct89% picked this

   Extroversion in people and dominant behavior in chimpanzees are both indicators of a genetic

   Why this is right

   This actually accomplishes two of our goals at once: - is diagnosing extroversion in neutral pictures of humans really parallel to diagnosing dominance in neutral pictures of chimps? Yeah, this answer says, they're connected. And they're connected in a way that increases the plausibility of the author's explanation that this photo-diagnosing ability is part of our primate biology. The two traits are indicators of a genetic predisposition to assertiveness. If extroversion and dominance are caused by our genetic makeup, then those same genes could plausibly cause our neutral faces to look a certain way that would be detectable by another member of our species.

   Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   89%
4. D

   No Impact1% picked this

   Any common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees would have to have lived over 7

   This is one of those "Cool fact, bro" answers. We aren't interested in learning about the common ancestor of humans and chimps. It's already established that we have a common ancestor, since we're both primates.

   1%
5. E

   No Impact / Too Weak6% picked this

   Some of the pictures of people used in the experiments were composites of

   "Some" is almost always wrong on Strengthen, Weaken, and Paradox, since it's such a weak quantity. If we say that "at least one of the pictures in the experiment was a composite of several different people", there's no real way to make sense of what effect that would have on this conversation. And because the quantifier is so small, even if we understood the effect of that information, it would be very slight impact.

   6%