Logical Reasoning

PT154 · S4 · Q16 Researchers investigating the accuracy

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Researchers investigating the accuracy of eyewitness accounts staged and made a video of a crime, and showed it to test subjects.

Statements

The paragraph describes a Curious Difference between two groups, so it presumably wants us to extract the Causal Difference-Maker.

Since being told / not being told "the criminal might not be in the lineup" was the difference between the groups, and in one of them 78% misidentified the criminal whereas in the other one only 38% misidentified the criminal, we want to articulate that the 1st difference caused the 2nd difference.

Being warned that the suspect might not be in the group led to a lower rate of misidentifying the criminal.

Maybe they looked with a more critical eye, knowing it's possible that all the options might be wrong. Meanwhile the group who wasn't warned the criminal might not be in the lineup was more likely to "force it", to "make it work", to figure out which suspect looked closest and then convince themselves it was the criminal.

Goal

Look for something safely reinforcing the relationship that , or conversely, .

16.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?

Eyewitnesses are no more likely
Unknown Comparison
We don't have any information about how people perform when they're given an accurate verbal description of the suspect, so there's no way to compare that to a visual experience of the suspect.
1% picked this
People tend to want to
Trap
Doesn't Explain Difference Out of Scope: stated expectation We were never told that the people in study received any stated expectation (i.e. the paragraph doesn't say that researchers stated, "Here is a lineup. We expect that you'll be able to identify which person is the criminal." Also, even if they had, this answer choice would apply to both groups the same way, so it doesn't explain the data very well. If all the research subjects wanted to appease the researchers and identify someone as the criminal, then both groups would have forced themselves to pick someone, even though the criminal wasn't there.
12% picked this
When specifically directed by a
Out of Scope: specifically directed
Similar to (B), we were never told that the people in study received any specific directions to say, "The criminal is someone in this lineup." And if we were to just assume that both groups had been told this, then it wouldn't explain the 78% vs. 38% variation.
8% picked this
People fail to recognize the
Out of Scope: recognize similarities
Did anything in this paragraph talk about subjects "failing to recognize similarities among a group of people"? Just because many of them wrongly picked a suspect as the criminal doesn't mean they failed to see the physical similarities among the people in the lineup.
3% picked this
Correct
People are less likely to
Why this is right
This answer reinforces the Causal Difference-Maker. The people who were told, "The criminal might not actually be anyone in this lineup" presumably started lowering their expectations that the "the criminal will be in this lineup", and this led to less misidentification of the criminal (38% vs. 78%). The other group, who wasn't told anything, probably had the default assumption when shown a lineup of suspects that the criminal would be someone in that group. Since the group who was warned went in with more skepticism, they didn't force themselves to pick a criminal when no one matched their memory.
Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
76% picked this

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