A study tested the performance of 70 pilots

Answer choices

1. A

   Helps Explain4% picked this

   Dieters often become preoccupied with worries about their weight losses and

   Can "being preoccupied" lead to worse performance as a pilot? Yeah, I guess that seems common sense enough.

   4%
2. B

   Helps Explain6% picked this

   Many of the pilots, including both dieters and nondieters, consumed alcohol before the tests, and dieting increases

   This answer is basically saying that a bunch of people were drinking before the tests, and the dieters who were drinking would have felt the effects of the alcohol more (they were literally having two beers on an empty stomach). Can feeling more of alcohol's effects explain impaired performance? Sure.

   6%
3. C

   Helps Explain1% picked this

   Reduced-calorie dieting makes most people more vulnerable to irritability

   Can being "irritable and fatigued" explain impaired performance? Sure. Fatigue is definitely connected with worse performance.

   1%
4. D

   Correct84% picked this

   Many of the pilots chose to go on the diet because they were curious about whether one?s weight

   Why this is right

   This is the classic No Distinction type of wrong answer we often see on normal Paradox questions. Because this is Paradox-EXCEPT, it's our correct answer. We need to figure out how to make a connection between dieting and worse performance, and this answer provides no distinction between the dieting group and the non-dieting group.

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

   84%
5. E

   Helps Explain5% picked this

   Whereas alcohol has no effect on the level of glucose (a nutrient vital to brain function) in the bloodstream,

   Dieting lowers glucose, and glucose is a nutrient vital to brain function. So if the dieting group had "less of a nutrient that's vital to brain function", could that explain impaired performance? Sure.

   5%