My initial reading tells me that the passage argument is ultimately a judgment of the Mexican hypothesis: whether or not the mounds found in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys came from people who emigrated from the area that is now Mexico. I also know that the Woodlands region is mentioned in paragraph 2, but is mainly discussed in the last paragraph, where the author ultimately argues against the Mexican hypothesis: “While squash might have been grown there, its presence at Poverty Point does not indicate a close relationship to Mexico because squash had diffused throughout the southeastern Woodlands regions as early as 2000 BC.” So the right answer is likely going to suggest that the squash didn’t come from Mexico, or from Mexican immigrants.

Pottery isn’t mentioned in that last paragraph, so I can eliminate A.

The hardiness of squash is also not mentioned in relation to the Woodlands regions, so B is also wrong.

C fits the author’s argument in that last paragraph, so I can choose it and move on.

The author actually ends up arguing the opposite of D. If D implies that squash was grown instead of maize at Poverty Point, the author is quick to check that line of thinking by claiming that squash would have predated any maize there, and so could not serve as evidence for the presence of people migrating from Mexico. In other words, the presence of squash doesn’t have anything to do with the presence or lack of presence of maize, which makes D wrong.

To answer this question, I need to both determine what claims made by archeologists are supported by evidence in paragraph 3. The right answer will be a claim that is not supported. So the most efficient strategy for this question involves knowing what the archeologists argue, and then checking each answer choice to see if it is an assumption: a claim that the argument depends on.

This is supported in the paragraph through reasoning: “The great size of some of the mounds implied the existence of a large labor force.” That makes A incorrect.

B is also supported with reasoning: “The great size of some of the mounds implied the existence of a large labor force without enough leisure time to devote to construction projects.” B is therefore also wrong.

I know that the archeologists claim that the society in question had to be an agricultural society, but I don’t see anything in the paragraph that would suggest that the mound builders had to grow these specific crops. They could have grown any crops that they wanted to. Since there is no evidence or reasoning to suggest C, I can choose it and move on.

D has to be incorrect, both because C is right, but also because it is supported with reasoning: “The work of specialist craftspeople, freed from subsistence tasks, seemed to be manifest in the fine quality of artifacts found in the mounds.” That’s more than enough to make D incorrect.

The reluctance mentioned in the question stem occurs right at the start of paragraph 2. Scanning the paragraph for a reason, the second sentence seems helpful: “Instead, diffusion of the practice from some area where it was already well established seemed to be the best way to explain its apparently sudden and relatively late appearance in the eastern Woodlands of the United States.” The implication here is that if the mounds were constructed by Native Americans—peoples who had been on the continent for a long time—the mounds would have been older, and would have been built over a longer length of time. One of those should be the answer.

A works, because it echoes what was said in paragraph 2 about the “sudden” appearance of these mounds.

Paragraph 2 says the opposite: that the mounds appear surprisingly late. That makes B wrong.

The size of the mounds isn’t mentioned in paragraph 2, so I can eliminate C.

D has the same problem: the purpose of the mounds isn’t speculated on in paragraph 2, so D is also wrong.

To answer a question like this, it is best to look for hints regarding what part of the passage the question is asking about. In this case, the mention of the Bering Strait seems important. That leads me to paragraph 2, which provides even more evidence that I’m in the right place: “A few archeologists suggested that mound building had diffused, along with cord-marked pottery found in the Woodlands, across the Bering Strait from Asia, but they had to admit that the absence of both traits in the intervening regions was problematic.” So if there is evidence of cord-marked pottery in the Bering Strait, that suggests that mound building came from Asia.

A is wrong, because the Bering Strait is between Asia and North America, not Europe and North America. Europe is implicitly mentioned in paragraph 2, but that is in relation to another theory posited at the end of paragraph 2: one that, by virtue of being an entirely distinct theory, is not strengthened by the situation given in the question stem.

That’s what I’m looking for, so I can choose B.

Scandinavia is mentioned at the end of paragraph 2, but as a different theory: one that does not mention the Bering Strait or cord-marked pottery. C is therefore wrong. C is also wrong because if C is right, then A also has to be right, since Scandinavia is part of Europe. And since this question cannot have two right answers, both C and A have to be wrong.

This theory is mentioned in paragraph 3, where there is no mention of the Bering Strait. That means this origin point doesn’t depend on the presence of cord-marked pottery in the Bering Strait, making D wrong.

This is a straightforward weakener, so I just need to find an answer choice which suggests that mound-building did not come from Mexico. That means I should be ready to reference paragraph 3, where that argument is raised, just in case the argument weakens one of the supporting arguments in favor of the hypothesis.

I have no idea what fine-quality artifacts have to do with mound-building, so I can eliminate A.

It’s difficult to determine the effect that B would have on the passage. It might strengthen the Mexico hypothesis by suggesting that Native Americans may have been influenced by Mexicans who built the mounds in the area. Or, it could suggest the opposite: that perhaps Native Americans reached Mexico at some point in the past, and influenced their pottery. More broadly, I don’t see what necessary effect pottery has on mound building, so I can safely eliminate B.

The only way that C makes sense is if it is implying that Mexicans emigrated to the western U.S. before moving into the areas discussed in the passage. But that actually makes the Mexican hypothesis stronger by helping explain how Mexicans got there. So C has to be wrong.

D is the only answer left, and luckily it is correct. Leisure time is mentioned in paragraph 3 as necessary to build the large mounds in question. The passage argues that leisure time was “inconceivable except as by-products of agriculture” (paragraph 3). But if D is true, then the agricultural culture in the region that was growing Mexican crops would have lacked the leisure time necessary to build the mounds, and so would challenge a key reason for believing that the mound builders came from Mexico. That means D has to be incorrect.

Cyrus Thomas is mentioned in the first paragraph: “The long-popular idea that the mounds were the work of a vanished culture was convincingly refuted by the end of the nineteenth century by naturalist Cyrus Thomas, who proved not only that the mounds had been raised by early Native Americans, but also that mound building had continued in some areas up to the time of the arrival of the Europeans.” To answer this question, I need to account for what function Thomas serves in the author’s argument. The only clear function I can see is that Thomas suggests that there was no vanished culture that built those mounds: that the mounds had to be built by a people that still existed. The author uses that to frame the rest of the passage, which is about which people could have built the mounds, so the right answer has to mention an argument against the theory that the mounds were built by a vanished culture.

A works, since that is almost exactly what is attributed to Thomas in the first paragraph. A is so clearly the right answer I would choose it and move on.

This is raised much later in the passage, well after the author has stopped talking about Thomas, so B has to be incorrect.

Thomas doesn’t say anything about when the mounds were first built in the eastern Woodlands. He actually only establishes that the mounds were still being built up to the arrival of the Europeans, so C has to be wrong.

D is definitely wrong because the author uses Thomas to set up the diffusion hypothesis. Thomas instead makes that hypothesis viable.

The passage focuses on outlining three solutions to the problem stated right at the beginning of the passage: “many rural Americans have limited access to health care. This problem stems from two aspects of the U.S. healthcare system: the many Americans without health insurance and the tendency of healthcare professionals to locate and practice in relatively affluent urban and suburban areas.” Since the passage does not discuss Americans without health insurance after this point, the passage topic has to be the second part of the problem: how to discourage healthcare professionals from avoiding rural areas.

This is correct. The passage is mostly about three solutions to the problem of healthcare workers being too concentrated in urban areas and not concentrated enough in rural areas: a problem of geographic distribution of healthcare workers. A addresses both, so I would choose it and move on.

The passage proposes no revisions for urban healthcare systems, so B has to be wrong.

The passage mentions healthcare in rural areas, but not health risks in those areas. Even if I stretch my understanding of C to read the first paragraph as saying that rural citizens suffer from risks that urban citizens do not simply because they have fewer healthcare workers, the passage does not actually focus on people living in rural areas. It instead focuses on healthcare workers and solutions; C therefore has to be wrong because it does not describe the main topic of the passage.

D has a similar problem to C: that inequities may be implied by the passage topic, but the passage is focused on solutions, not on inequities themselves. D is therefore incorrect.

This multiple option question is so broad that it can only be answered by evaluating each option.I is incorrect: both because it is not stated, but also because the passage is actually concerned with how individuals who might need healthcare in rural areas aren’t getting that care.

II is mentioned in the first paragraph, though, so that has to be correct.

III is implied as part of the problem in the first paragraph, since the passage suggests there that healthcare access is negatively impacted when providers do not live close to those they serve. So the right answer has to be II and III.

I can’t be right, otherwise the passage loses its main problem.

II is correct, but it’s not the only correct option.

I is wrong, so C is wrong.

D matches my prediction, so it is the right answer.

This question asks about the function of a piece of the passage: what role a cited part plays in the overall passage. The Talley passage in paragraph 2 is part of that paragraph’s argument: “The medical education system could help to increase access to rural health care by selecting, training, and deploying more healthcare workers who choose to practice in rural areas. R. C. Talley writes in Academic Medicine that students with rural origins are more likely to train in primary care and return to rural areas; family medicine is the key discipline of rural health care; and residents practice close to where they train.” Talley clearly helps to explain how the medical system could help to address the lack of rural health care providers; to find a right answer, I just need to pick the abstracted description that resembles this claim.

Talley’s Academic Medicine does not challenge anything; it instead supports a previously made point. So A has to be wrong.

B works; paragraph 2 starts with a solution, and Talley helps provide evidence for it.

There is no critique of scenarios in the passage, so C can’t be right.

There are no paradoxes mentioned in the passage, so D has to be wrong.

To answer this question, I need to find the answer choice that somehow implements or builds off of Talley’s insights. Since I just answered a question about Talley, I know that Talley claims that “students with rural origins are more likely to train in primary care and return to rural areas; residents trained in rural areas are more likely to choose to practice in rural areas; family medicine is the key discipline of rural health care; and residents practice close to where they train.” So the right answer will relate to at least one of these findings.

A has to be incorrect because Talley talks about training people in rural areas, since they will tend to practice where they are trained. Talley doesn’t mention urban medical schools at all.

I’m not sure how B would help rural areas as Talley suggests, since it doesn’t have anything to do with moving medical students and personnel into rural areas. B therefore has to be wrong.

C is a bad answer choice because it’s ambiguous. It might be the right answer if those subsidies were for urban physicians to actually provide health care to rural Americans, but C doesn’t clarify what the subsidies are for. That’s not quite enough for me to eliminate C, but it’s enough for me to be ready for D to be the right answer.

And luckily, D is a much better answer than C. Whereas C requires me to make a few extra leaps in logic to tie it to Talley’s points, D doesn’t require any leaps at all. Talley mentions that “students with rural origins are more likely to train in primary care and return to rural areas,” so helping students from rural areas to pay for medical school will likely lead to more doctors who will want to work in rural areas. That all makes correct.

There is no easy way to answer this question; I have to go through the passage and just check and see if each answer choice is supported. Three will be supported; the right answer will just be stated, without explanation or evidence.

A has to be incorrect because it is strongly supported by the references to Talley.

This is supported by the end of paragraph 3: “This approach has been used with some success in Britain, Canada, and Australia, where a variety of bonuses increase reimbursement for selected rural practitioners.” That makes B incorrect.

This is a great candidate for the right answer. The quote comes from the end of a paragraph, which means that it can’t be followed by evidence or explanation unless the next paragraph does that work. Because the next paragraph starts with “Finally,” which is a keyword signaling a shift in topic, I know that no explanation follows the quote given in C. Therefore, C has to be right: because it is simply stated, without anything to back it up.

This claim starts paragraph 5, so there’s a high likelihood that what follows it will support it. And indeed it does; the rest of the paragraph gives examples of how telemedicine is growing and has potential—“Some applications, such as reading electrocardiograms at a distance, have become very common”—but unstructured: “while others, such as dermatology consultations, are being performed in many different areas but without standard protocols.” That’s more than enough support to make D incorrect.

The National Health Services Corps are mentioned in paragraph 4. My initial reading marked this as an example of the second solution to the problem of healthcare workers not living near rural areas: “programs that provide direct services to underserved areas.” Since the author calls this one of the federal programs that are “the preeminent safety net programs for rural America,” the author probably thinks highly of these direct services. However, a quick check throughout the passage suggests that I should also pay attention to paragraph 2, which describes federal programs like the NHSC as possibly “controversial, complex, and expensive.” Hopefully one of those two predictions will be in the answer choices.

Paragraph 2 actually directly contradicts this, since it states that free market solutions are preferable to federal systems. So A can’t be right.

Paragraph 3, where the NHSC is discussed, doesn’t talk about how well-utilized the program is, so I can eliminate B.

C, however, does align with a reading of both paragraphs 2 and 4, so it’s correct.

The author doesn’t say anything about whether or not recipients are entitled to NHSC services, so D has to be wrong.

In paragraph 2, Zilhāo brings up an interpretation of the ornaments found in Neanderthal caves that differs from other scientists: “His analysis of the ornaments and tools from the cave that yielded the 1996 discovery suggest methods and materials quite different from those attributed to modern humans.” If Neanderthal ornaments were constructed in a different manner than were modern human ornaments, then the likelihood that Neanderthals had to learn ornament making from modern humans, and that Neanderthals were mentally incapable of constructing such ornaments, would be greatly lessened. So the right answer needs to somehow strengthen that claim.

A is intriguing. If Neanderthal ornaments are older than modern human ornaments, that would definitely suggest that the Neanderthals made their ornaments. A is good enough to be correct.

The right answer needs to either implicitly or explicitly compare humans and Neanderthals. I don’t see how the ornament material does that, so B has to be wrong.

It’s not clear what can be gleaned from C. C could either strengthen or weaken Zilhāo’s argument; it would weaken it if it suggested that Neanderthal ornaments came from modern humans, or it could strengthen it if it suggested that modern humans got their ornaments from Neanderthals. C is also a problem because Zilhāo’s argument resets on their being differences in the “methods and materials” used by Neanderthals and humans. In that light, C would actually weaken Zilhāo’s hypothesis, making D definitely wrong.

D doesn’t clearly strengthen or weaken Zilhāo’s hypothesis, since it doesn’t clearly suggest anything about when and how the ornaments were created. Those ornaments could have been made by Neanderthals, but they also could have been given to Neanderthals by modern humans. Since D has no discernible effect on Zilhāo’s hypothesis, it has to be wrong.

d’Errico is mentioned in paragraph 3, which talks about Neanderthal jewelry: “What we know is that their [Neanderthals’] way of using symbols was not qualitatively different from that of anatomically modern humans, which contradicts the hypothesis of their cognitive inferiority.” The author goes on to say that “d’Errico and his colleagues would even flip the established hierarchy, proposing the novel idea that Neanderthals may have taught modern humans how to make some objects.” Since the right answer will be something which d’Errico’s argument needs in order to be justifiable, I’m probably looking for something that suggests Neanderthals used jewelry as symbols. I know this, because if that isn’t the case, d’Errico’s argument won’t work; such is the textbook definition of what a “necessary” claim is.

A is exactly what I’m looking for, so I would take it. But given how challenging this question is, I also would eliminate the other answer choices, just to be sure.

B really resembles A, which is a red flag; both can’t be correct. B specifically resembles the end of paragraph 3, but d’Errico’s central point actually doesn’t require that Neanderthals invented the use of jewelry as symbols. All d’Errico needs is proof that Neanderthals used jewelry as symbols. Since B is making a more specific claim than the passage is, it has to be wrong.

C is wrong because simple copying of a design doesn’t necessarily mean that Neanderthals used and understood symbols. A thing becomes symbolic not because it is made in a certain way, but rather because we attribute some meaning to a thing: because we think about that thing in a certain way. Since C doesn’t talk at all about this conceptual aspect of symbolism, C has to be incorrect.

D has a similar problem to C, since it does not touch on the thinking aspect of symbolism. Neanderthals may have traded jewelry with modern humans without ever knowing the symbolic value of the jewelry.

When dealing with a weakener, the right answer can either attack the argument cited, or its evidence. Shea claims in paragraph 5 that “Not only did Neanderthals hunt regularly, they crafted a varied arsenal,” so I know I’m generally looking for something which states that the Neanderthals did not make different kinds of hunting tools. However, the evidence used to back this up states that “His study of stone points from fifty-eight Neanderthal sites shows both wood-tipped spears and stone-tipped spears, yielding the hypothesis that each type of tool was for a different kind of prey.” That’s enough for me to make another prediction: that the right answer could also say that these two kinds of spears were only used for one kind of prey.

Shea’s argument only talks about how the hunters used different kinds of spears for different kinds of prey. That doesn’t immediately have anything to do with how durable the spears are, so A can be eliminated.

B, however, fits my second prediction well. Since Shea’s argument depends on the idea that “each type of tool was for a different kind of prey,” but there are two types of spears and only one kind of prey in the area, then Shea’s argument would lose a key piece of evidence and thus be weakened. B is correct.

Shea’s argument only covers hunting tools, so it’s not clear what effect an argument about crafting tools would have on Shea’s argument. C is therefore wrong.

Shea’s argument is about Neanderthals, so D, with its focus on modern humans, would not affect it.

Here is a nice straightforward main point question. I know that the passage begins by raising the negative view of Neanderthals in order to argue against them by bringing up evidence that Neanderthals were likely more advanced than their stereotypical depiction suggests: advanced in their use of symbolism, and their ability to hunt. That should be more than enough to find an answer.

At no point does the passage suggest that Neanderthals are still around, so A has to be incorrect.

The passage suggests that this might be possible, but that is largely given as conjecture. The passage is more focused on arguing that the Neanderthals made jewelry and hunted, because such would speak to how much more advanced Neanderthals were relative to how they have been seen in the past. That means I don’t have a good reason to choose B.

C is a perfect answer. Neanderthals were creative insofar as they may have made jewelry with symbolic value, and were flexible insofar as they were able to hunt for their own food. C describes what the passage focuses on arguing, and so I can choose it and move on confidently.

I don’t remember anything in the passage about the cold, so that already makes me suspicious of D. More importantly, though, being “well-adapted” doesn’t necessarily say anything about how Neanderthals thought, which is the real focus of the passage. Animals can be well-adapted to certain environments, but that does not suggest that they are able to make jewelry or hunt. Since D lacks a key element of the passage, it has to be wrong.

There are many different ways to determine the author’s attitude. One way that feels like it will work for this paragraph is to go to the last paragraph, where I know the author reflects on the findings about Neanderthals. That paragraph begins with an implicit statement about the author’s attitude: “Taken together, the studies leave researchers with many further mysteries to consider.” The rest of the paragraph describes those mysteries. Given that the passage ends with questions, it’s a safe bet that the author is interested: would like to see those questions answered.

A is one way to describe wanting questions to be answered. To be intrigued is to be attracted to something mysterious, and the author clearly believes that these findings about Neanderthals are mysterious. A works so well that I would choose it and move on.

The author isn’t clearly skeptical of anything; the passage even leaves the idea that Neanderthals may have been “the brutish cousins of the human family” directly unchallenged, since the author just mentions that some contrary research is developing. B therefore has to be wrong.

The author’s questions at the end don’t really suggest confusion. The issue there is not that the author doesn’t understand the studies or their findings; it’s rather that those findings are really intriguing, and that the author is spurred on to find answers to his questions. C is therefore incorrect.

The author’s tone is far too neutral for D to be correct. One other way to know that D is incorrect is to ask: what exactly does the author approve of? Since that’s not an easy question to answer, D is definitely wrong.

Since the question is so general, predicting what the right answer will look like is difficult. However, the answer choices give me some help, since they all ask about people who are mentioned in paragraph 3. A quick glance there tells me that the author is talking about how “Writers are far more cunning than the credulous reader supposes. We are all practiced shape-shifters and ventriloquists; we can assume forms and speak in voices not our own.” The author then goes on to say that Shakespeare and Faulkner were really good at this, while Hemingway, Wolfe, and Porter did not practice this skill: “are haunted by recurring characters that look like clones of their authors.” That will hopefully be enough to help me find the right answer.

While the author clearly thinks highly of Shakespeare, the author’s opinion of Hemingway is less clear, which makes any direct comparison regarding their writing abilities difficult. And since the author is not interested in writing quality in paragraph 3 anyway, A has to be wrong.

The author actually seems to imply the opposite: that Faulkner was much better about speaking in a voice that was not his own, while Hemingway tended to write like himself. So B has to be wrong.

I can eliminate C right away because I don’t know what having a wide variety of characters has to do with whether or not an author writes in a way that obfuscates their own voice.

D is the last answer standing, and has to be correct. Hemingway’s fiction is likely going to be more personal than Faulkner’s because Faulkner worked to hide his personality and history in his writing, while the author says that Hemingway did not.

Stendhal is mentioned in paragraph 1: “It is also more than the mirror in the roadway that Stendhal says it was.” The author is referring to fiction here, and then goes on to say that fiction is a lens: a tool that is not, like a mirror, “a mechanical reflector.” “One mirror is like another.” That seems to indicate what the author thinks of Stendhal’s view of fiction: that it is a mirror, or direct reflection of its subject.

Inner feelings are subjective, but Stendhal is described as acting like a “mechanical reflector,” or something more objective. That’s enough for me to eliminate A.

B goes against the idea of fiction as a mirror: as something which is just reflecting what is in front of it. A mirror does not make what it reflects pleasant or unpleasant; that all depends on the events captured. Since B says something that the passage does not, it is incorrect.

C is actually similar to B, insofar as both suggest that fiction authors are supposed to craft and emphasize something in their work. Both are therefore wrong because Stendhal’s depiction of fiction suggests the exact opposite: that fiction should just capture, and not shape what it captures.

D is a great answer choice, because simple duplication is what mirrors do. I can choose D and move on.

The passage is primarily about writers and how they relate to their work, but the author does mention his readers in paragraph 3: “Writers are far more cunning than the credulous reader supposes.” He’s saying here that the reader supposes “that when an ‘I’ character speaks in one of my novels or stories he is to be read as me, sneakily expressing my attitudes and feelings from behind a mask” (paragraph 2). In other words, the author is accusing his readers of assuming that his work reflects something about him: that it is somehow very personally based on the author’s life.

The author mentions that he does make mistakes (paragraph 2), but not how his readers react to those mistakes. A is therefore wrong.

B also gives a claim that is half in the passage. The author does imply that writers manipulate readers when he says that “We are all practiced shape-shifters and ventriloquists”: both kinds of performances that depend on being able to manipulate the audience. But the author’s argument rests on the idea that readers are actually unaware of this manipulation, since they tend to think that authors are always speaking through their characters. B therefore has to be wrong.

This phrasing comes from paragraph 4, where the author refers to writing. He is not talking about reading, and it is otherwise unclear that readers even look at works as ordering chaos. C therefore has to be wrong.

D is left, and it has to be right. The idea that he is writing from his own experiences aligns with my deduction from paragraph 2: that the author believes his readers will be quick to think that his characters speak as he thinks, and that his books are based on his life.

I should have this in my notes from my initial reading of the passage. I know that the author raises a few models of fiction in order to critique them and propose another: “there is no escaping the fact that fiction is only as good as its maker. It sees only with the clarity that the writer is capable of, and it perpetuates the writer’s astigmatisms.” So I’m looking for an answer choice which ties writing to its writer.

This is Stendhal’s perspective on fiction, but the author disregards A almost as quickly as the author mentions it, so A has to be wrong.

B works as an answer choice. The idea that fiction can tell me something about what its writer is good and bad at is in line with “fiction is only as good as its maker. It sees only with the clarity that the writer is capable of.” I would therefore choose B and move on.

C resembles A way too much to be correct, so I can eliminate C.

“Astigmatisms” is an uncommon enough word that I would remember it upon seeing it. What I do not remember is any indication that the author links writerly astigmatisms to the quality of their work. Quality isn’t even mentioned in that paragraph, besides at the very beginning: “a fiction is more than well-carpentered entertainment.” Since D doesn’t really encompass what happens in paragraph 1, it has to be incorrect.

Strange to not only get two of these question types in the same test, but to get them in a row. However, paragraph 4 is difficult to understand, so it’s not surprising that the test would ask a question about it. Paragraph 4 begins with an argument: “The differences between those extremes of ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ are obvious but not critical. Some writers want to expose themselves, some to disguise themselves, some to efface themselves […] There is more than one way to impose order on your personal chaos; but since good writers write what’s important to them, they are bound to be in there somewhere.” Given that the passage starts by arguing that “a good writer is a lens” insofar as a lens is a personalized perspective that affects what it sees, the author seems to be suggesting that writing always says something about its writers in some way.

A fits what I’m searching for, so I can choose it and move on.

The start of paragraph 4 actually states that it doesn’t matter all that much if a writer’s work is subjective or objective: that the distinction between such works is “not critical.” That’s enough to make B incorrect.

This choice is meant to be attractive because it echoes a part of paragraph 4: “There is more than one way to impose order on your personal chaos.” But while C is an implication of the author’s argument, paragraph 4 is more focused on the notion that the way that authors create order imprints onto their writing. C doesn’t capture the full argument of the paragraph, so it has to be wrong.

D has a similar problem to C. Both capture a part of the paragraph—the author mentions that “Some writers want to expose themselves” in paragraph 4—but that point is in service to a larger point regarding how authors inevitably impact their writing. So D is wrong for the same reason C is wrong: it doesn’t capture the full paragraph’s argument.

This is a function question; it’s asking me to identify what role the cited piece of the passage plays in the overall argument. My initial reading tells me that paragraph 2 is where the commodity musical is introduced, so 9 to 5 is likely an example of the commodity musical. More specifically, it is part of a subsidiary argument about such musicals: “The shows may also be cast to evoke their source material: the stars of the stage version of 9 to 5, for example, bore an unmistakable resemblance to their on-screen models.” So the right answer might also claim that 9 to 5 is an example of a musical really closely emulating the successful movie it is an adaptation of.

The author is making a point about the cast of commodity musicals when 9 to 5 is mentioned, and not the titles, so A has to be wrong.

B is a great answer choice, since 9 to 5 illustrates how the musical tried to so resemble its source material that it even sought out cast members that looked like people from the movie. I would choose B and move on.

I can eliminate C because it distorts the passage logic. The author isn’t saying that casting is more important than any other aspect of an adaptation in paragraph 2. The argument just says that casting is one way that commodity musicals can try to resemble what they adapt.

If I had not read the passage closely, I might have chosen D. 9 to 5 is definitely a Broadway musical that was based on a Hollywood movie. But since the author uses 9 to 5 for a more specific point about how closely these musicals relate to the movies they adapt, D is less specific than A, and so is incorrect.

I remember Promises, Promises in my initial reading of the passage: specifically, because I did not know why the author referenced it, beyond the fact that it was a musical that came out in 1968. I don’t even know if Promises, Promises is a commodity musical or not. Rereading the passage doesn’t clarify things, since the paragraph is mainly focused on explaining why commodity musicals are safe investments: because Broadway tickets have gotten very expensive relative to 1968. That means that the author could have mentioned any other musical from 1968, and the point would still be made. In other words, the specific mention is unimportant. That’s enough to find an answer.

There is no clear irony, since to say that the reference is ironic would be to make a more specific point about Promises, Promises than the passage does. Since the only thing I know about that musical from paragraph 3 is when it came out, there isn’t enough information for A to be correct.

B, though, fits what I predicted: that the specific mention of that musical is unimportant, or incidental to the author’s actual point about Broadway ticket prices in 1968.

The author does not dismiss Promises, Promises; the author’s tone about the musical itself is so neutral that it is difficult to gauge what he thinks about it. That makes C wrong.

D is an answer choice I have to be careful with. The point about how Broadway ticket prices have gone up is definitely significant. But the mention of the musical is not. So D has to be wrong.

The one thing I know from the passage about how things are going on Broadway now is given in paragraph 3: that “commodity musicals” have “come to dominate the Broadway stage.” The last paragraph states that this is unlikely to change in the future, and that this is a bad thing. Since this is an analogy question—I can confirm that by looking at the answer choices, which don’t have anything to do with musicals—I need to find an answer choice which follows the logic of the passage: one that describes a creatively bankrupt but popular version of an art form becoming the dominant kind of that art form.

There’s not a clear sense of creative bankruptcy or popularity with A: both of which are essential aspects of the commodity musical. So A has to be wrong.

B has a similar problem to A, insofar as I can’t see how the author’s arguments about the commodity musical could be analogized into claims about being positive or inspiring.

I have no idea if Broadway performers or plays start on smaller stages and move onto larger ones, so I can’t see how C could follow logic that is analogous to the passage argument.

That leaves D, and luckily D is clearly right. It describes concerts as being creatively bankrupt, since they are only willing to put on one innovative work; the “only” there implies that one work is not much. D also works because the “otherwise familiar classical pieces” are likely popular and not innovative: just like commodity musicals.

This is easy; the author clearly dislikes these musicals. The end of the second paragraph, where the commodity musical is introduced, is full of effortful disdain: “They are inoffensively entertaining at best, numbingly tedious at worst.” The last paragraph makes the author’s low opinion of commodity musicals as clear as possible when the author mentions that commodity musicals are here to stay: “The old-fashioned Broadway musical, with its optimism and burgeoning musical energy, is gone for good, replaced for the moment—and very possibly for a long time to come—by a watered-down, parasitical imitation of the real thing.” So I’m looking for an answer choice which captures the author’s outright hatred.

A’s the opposite of what I’m looking for.

There is barely any admiration for the commodity musical in the passage; I would say there is none at all. More importantly, the right answer has to be a negative opinion, which B is not.

“Contingent disappointment” means that the author’s disappointment in the musical depends on some key factors. The problem is that the author is utterly unreserved in hating commodity musicals; there is no sense that the author is holding back. That makes C wrong.

Only a choice as strongly worded as D can accurately capture the author’s very negative feelings about commodity musicals. D is correct.

The situation in the question stem brings paragraph 1 to mind, since it is both an adaptation and one that drastically departs from what it is adapting: “Since the early twentieth century, most successful Broadway musicals have been adaptations of some kind. Their creators took it for granted, however, that the shows were essentially original works of popular art and did not depend on the familiarity of the audience with the source material […] creators typically treated source material with great freedom and latitude.” Since I’m being asked about how the information in the question stem relates to passage information, it’s pretty clear that it supports a claim made in the first paragraph about non-commodity musicals. It is an example of one of them.

A is the opposite of what I’m looking for, since the author would describe West Side Story as a non-commodity musical.

B is incorrect because the new information doesn’t challenge anything raised in the passage.

Since West Side Story isn’t a commodity musical, it can’t challenge claims about commodity musicals. C has to be wrong.

D is what I’m looking for, since West Side Story resembles the non-commodity musicals mentioned in paragraph 1.

My first reaction to this question is puzzlement, especially given the last question. West Side Story would qualify as one of these “golden age” Broadway musicals, and the passage argument implies that West Side Story would have been considered less accessible than a commodity musical, and more artistically innovative. Given the author’s high opinion of these “golden age” musicals, and given the reasoning attributed to the theater critics, the right answer has to say something about how the author disagrees with those critics, on the grounds that they seem to misunderstand what “golden age” Broadway musicals are actually like.

I know the author would disagree with these critics, since the author thinks that “golden age” Broadway musicals can count as “high art” by virtue of the author’s arguments against the commodity musical. A is therefore wrong.

B works as the right answer, since it both implies that the critics are wrong, and that they are wrong because they are “unnecessarily dismissive”: because they don’t fully understand what they’re dismissing. I would choose B and move on.

Again, C is instantly wrong because I know the author would not agree with the critics mentioned in the question stem.

D is wrong because I can’t see how the passage discussion of how much it costs to produce a Broadway musical has anything to do with the critics mentioned in the question stem, since those critics don’t mention profitability. They only mention accessibility, which is not the same thing. I can therefore eliminate D.

The last sentence is: “The old-fashioned Broadway musical, with its optimism and burgeoning musical energy, is gone for good, replaced for the moment—and very possibly for a long time to come—by a watered-down, parasitical imitation of the real thing.” To answer this question, I need to determine what the author emphasizes in this sentence in as specific terms as possible. The phrase that stands out the most is the author’s description of the commodity musical as “a watered-down, parasitical imitation of the real thing.” That’s a very specific objection to raise; the more specific an objection is, the more likely it is that the author wants me to pay attention to that objection. So the right answer will likely say something about how commodity musicals are bad imitations of the musical.

The author at no point calls commodity musicals innovative, and often suggests that they are the opposite.

The author never says that commodity musicals are ambiguous. If anything, part of the problem that commodity musicals face is that they are too transparent: both as copies, and as cash grabs.

“Derivative” is a synonym of “imitation” that has the negative connotation. Since I predicted that the author is trying to say something bad about these musicals in the last sentence, C has to be the right answer.

D is also the opposite of the author’s sense of commodity musicals. One way to sum up the way the author sees them is “lazy,” since they don’t try to innovate, and rely heavily on what they are adapting. D is therefore wrong.

I know that the example of the child is meant to support the author’s main idea: that “Plato’s general argument about art must be rejected” (last paragraph) because emotion is not opposed to reason. To better understand how to undermine the passage argument, I first need to better understand the specific claim about the child. That is mentioned in paragraph 4: “there is evidence that even strong emotions possess a sort of rationality—that is, they are governed by thought, and they are educable. We try to convince a child not to fear an imagined monster underneath the bed by proving that no monster is there.” Since the entire point of mentioning the child is to support the claim that there can be reasoning underlying strong emotions, I’m looking for an answer choice which suggests that there is no reasoning that underlies the child’s strong emotions.

A fits the bill, because if the child cannot control their fear, then there is no reasoning that can affect or mitigate that fear. The strong emotion is no longer educable, and so the entire point of paragraph 4 would be weakened.

I’m not sure what B has to do with the child having strong emotions that are reasonable. Since B does not contain any elements that reference reasoning—which is at the heart of the argument that the right answer is supposed to undermine—B cannot be correct.

On the face of it, C has a similar problem to B, insofar as it does not obviously involve reasoning and strong emotion. But on closer scrutiny, C is actually an even worse answer choice than B, since it implies that the child could learn how to work through the reasoning that underlies its strong emotion if the child trusted the educator. Making a decision based on whether or not one trusts a source is a reasoned response. C therefore actually illustrates the author’s point, and so cannot weaken it.

I cannot tell what D has to do with being able to adjust an emotional state by reasoning one’s way through it, so D has to be wrong.

This question asks about such a small portion of the passage that it took me a second to figure out where to look: the very end of the passage, where the author states that “the only danger of art to society is not that it excites the passions but that it may instill false beliefs.” So if I’m looking to justify the author’s assertion here, I need an answer choice that describes some piece of art that instills false beliefs.

There’s nothing obviously false about grief and horror.

B, though, is right. Even though it’s possible that some people believe in demonic possession, demonic possession is generally held to be false, so the novel mentioned in B risks instilling false beliefs in its readers. And according to the passage, instilling false beliefs may have undesirable social effects. B is correct. If you as a reader believe in demonic possession, or do not apprehend that it is a false belief in the eyes of the exam, then it’s worth checking the other two answer choices to see if they are any better.

There is no factual aspect of C to be false about, so it cannot be right.

D has the same problem; if you think about it, there is nothing here that we would necessarily think of as referring to truth, so there is no way for a lyrical poem that arouses sensual desires to instill false beliefs if all that it does is arouse sensual desires. Since C and D are such bad answers, and B is really the only answer choice which contains a claim that could be seen as a false belief, B has to be correct.

This is a function question—in which I need to determine what effect the situation in the question stem would have on the passage argument—so I should start by making sure I know the part of the passage argument that could be affected by the question stem. Since the question stem is talking about arousing emotion, my best guess is that I should go to the main idea: specifically the idea that reason and emotion are not opposed to each other. In that light, the question stem is describing people who are in touch with reasons to feel strong emotions: if the book is realistic. So the right answer will likely say something about how the situation supports the author’s conclusions by providing an example of reason influencing emotion.

I don’t see anything about human survival in the question stem, so A is out.

B looks like a good answer choice. The readers’ insights regarding what arouses emotion is a reasoned engagement with the narrative. Still, B is not a perfect fit for my prediction, so I’m best off double checking the rest of the choices as well.

The situation in the question stem supports the author, so C is actually the opposite of what I’m looking for.

D has a similar problem to C. It’s doubly wrong because the situation in the question stem implies that people do apply reasoning to art: reasoning that, for example, considers whether something is realistic or not as a reason to feel emotional about what one is reading. D is therefore wrong.

The example of whether or not anger could be reduced to its physiological symptoms stood out to me in my first reading of the passage, so I know that I need to go to paragraph 3 to answer this question. There, the author refers to chemically inducing the physiological reactions associated with anger, but without any reason to be angry, then asks, “Are you angry? No, you are only uneasy, restless—unless there is someone or something giving you cause for anger. Your colleague’s rudeness does not come to mind. The chemicals have induced only symptoms of emotion.” The author is arguing here that emotions are more than just a physiological reaction; there has to be some reason for you to be angry in order for you to be angry. The situation in the question stem is sort of the reverse of the anger example though, since instead of only generating the symptoms of anger, those symptoms are suppressed. To understand what will happen in this situation, I should go to the followup explanations the author provides for the anger example in paragraph 4: “This demonstration implies that emotion requires at least two components: measurable physiological events and belief or thought about some person or situation, real or imagined.” So I can at least deduce that since only one of those components is present in the question stem, there will not be a strong emotion. And since the reason for being unhappy with the person would still be there, those in the study would still likely have some negative impression of the person they’re seeing. Hopefully that’s enough to find an answer.

A is immediately wrong because it says that participants would have an intense reaction, when paragraph 4 implies that this can’t be the case without a physiological component to the situation.

I’m not sure what “normal” means here, which automatically makes for a problematic answer choice. But since the question stem involves chemically modifying the participants, I can safely assume that whatever the participant response will be, it will not be how they would normally respond. I can therefore eliminate B.

C is a possibility, since it at least admits that participants will not feel strong emotions, but C is lacking any acknowledgement of what participants will have in the situation: the knowledge that they are in a situation that would make them angry, that gives them reason to be angry. C is therefore an incomplete answer choice, and so I can eliminate it.

D has to be right via the process of elimination, and it is. On the one hand, D acknowledges the effect of chemically suppressing physiological responses by noting that the participant reaction will be calm. On the other hand, D also acknowledges the reasoning that the participants do have, since a situation that would make someone angry is likely going to involve reasons why the person should be angry.

Plato’s opinion on emotion and reason begins the passage: “Plato taught that the corrupting influence of the arts justified their banishment from his ideal city. His argument hinged on a conviction that the emotions are irrational, in the sense that they undermine the rule of reason in the individual.” A quick glance at the answer choices confirms that I am looking for an example in which the first term undermines the second.

Paint doesn’t undermine painting. If anything, paint is integral to painting. A therefore resembles the author’s argument about how emotion depends on reason. That makes it incorrect.

B is a perfect candidate for the right answer, since just as emotion undermines reason, disease undermines health. That’s enough to make me choose B and move on.

The relationship of the body to the soul is multifaceted, and difficult to pin down. At the very least, though, I cannot be sure that body somehow undermines soul, so that’s enough to eliminate C.

Water and ice are the same substance in different forms. But the passage does not suggest that emotion and reason are the same things in different forms. Since D is not similar to Plato’s depiction of emotion and reason, it must be incorrect.

This question brings me back to paragraph 3 and 4, but also to paragraph 2, where the author defines an emotion as a physical sensation. The author then raises the anger example to argue that emotions require both physiological symptoms and a reason or cause for anger. Hopefully that is enough to find an answer for this question.

Even though I don’t have a specific prediction for this question, A strikes me as a pretty good candidate for the right answer. For the author’s example of anger to argue that emotions need both reasons and physiological symptoms, the author must assume that removing the object of one’s anger—that is, the colleague that “spoke to you sarcastically”—is enough to remove the reason for being angry. That implies that the reasoning that can inspire the emotion of anger involves something specific. Even though that reasoning works, because I could not predict what the right answer would look like from just the question stem, I’d feel better if I eliminated all the other answer choices.

The argument about emotions and feelings in the passage doesn’t talk about what is genuine or not, so I can eliminate B.

This is a claim that the author argues, but C is actually not implicit in the author’s specific argument about emotions not being equivalent to feelings. This is because that argument is not designed to justify whether or not physiological changes are needed for an emotion to happen. The anger example is instead designed to test the other condition that the author says is necessary for emotions like anger to occur: a reason. C therefore has to be wrong.

I don’t see anything about art in the argument about emotions and feelings, so D is wrong.

Though the author does not use the term “socially responsible drama,” I can safely assume that the author is talking about art in general, since the author implicitly argues against Plato: who claims that art is socially irresponsible because it undermines reason. The author talks about art after laying out the reasons for seeing reason as an integral part of emotion in paragraph 5: “art does not necessarily undermine reason in addressing the emotions. Indeed, because of the immediacy of its activation, the reactive component of emotion may serve the reflective component by directing attention to information of importance to us.” Though that’s a wordy part of the text, that last sentence is talking about the benefits of art: that it can help us to notice things that we’re supposed to think about and pay attention to.

I don’t see anything in paragraph 5 or in the passage in general about avoiding negative attitudes and feelings, so I can eliminate A.

B is a good candidate for the right answer, since stimulating thought is synonymous with “directing attention to information of importance to us.” I would choose B and move on.

Culture is mentioned in paragraph 6, but it doesn’t clearly have anything to do with art in the passage, so C has to be wrong.

I also don’t remember any mention of purging unhealthy emotions, so D has to be wrong.

Though Watt’s model is mentioned in paragraph 6, the difference between Watt’s model and what most people think of a small-world experience is not discussed until paragraph 8: “There is also a difference between what most people mean by a small-world experience and what mathematicians mean. The chances of meeting a person who knows someone from one’s past are not the same as the chances of connection between two people taken at random.” That phrasing suggests that most people think of a small world experience in terms of “meeting a person who knows someone from one’s past,” while mathematicians think of the small world as a “connection between two people taken at random.” That should be enough for a right answer.

I don’t see anything about limiting the number of possible targets in the passage. Rather, since mathematical models take two people at random, that is likely going to be a much larger pool of targets than the pool of people who might know someone from one’s past. A therefore has to be incorrect.

Cooperation is mentioned as a potential problem in Milgram’s experiment, but is not mentioned in reference to a mathematical model of small worlds, so B is wrong.

Paragraph 6 implies that Watt’s mathematical model does take sociable people into account, since it states that Watts found that “Random connectors in a network, such as especially sociable people who have friends across subcultures, can vastly decrease the distance between points in a network.” C has to be wrong.

D fits my prediction, so I can choose it and move on.

The intelligentsia are mentioned in paragraph 2: “In the intervening decades, Milgram’s findings slipped away from their scientific moorings and sailed into the world of imagination. The idea of six degrees of separation was adopted by the intelligentsia.” Because the intelligentsia are mentioned immediately after the author mentions the imaginative appeal of Milgram’s findings, the author must be implying that the intelligentsia accepted it for reasons relating to the imagination. That’s not a well-formed prediction, but it should be enough to find a correct answer.

This is mentioned in the same sentence as the intelligentsia, but is phrased in such a way that implies that Milgram’s theory appeared in media and movies for the same reasons that it appealed to the intelligentsia. Since media, movies, and the intelligentsia share a reason for liking Milgram’s theory, the media and movies cannot be the reason why the intelligentsia accepted Milgram’s theory. A is wrong.

B fits my prediction. But since that prediction was so sketchy, I would feel better if I eliminated the other answer choices.

Mathematical models are mentioned later in the passage, but are not mentioned anywhere near the passage discussion of the intelligentsia. That suggests that mathematical models and the intelligentsia likely have little to do with each other, which makes C wrong.

Race and class boundaries are mentioned in relation to Milgram’s experiment, but as part of the explanation for why so few folders made it to their destinations. There is no clear relationship in the passage between the intelligentsia and D, so D has to be wrong.

This question is checking to see if I can re-describe Milgram’s experiment in generalized terms that could apply to a different experiment: in this case, one about how rumors are transmitted. The challenge with this question is that Milgram’s experiment is complex, and the answer choices are so short that the right answer can only involve one part of Milgram’s experiment, so the most efficient way I can approach this question is to test each answer choice and see if it corresponds to Milgram’s experiment, and if it could be used by someone studying rumor transmission. The right answer will do both.

A is wrong because Milgram’s starters were in different cities than their targets. The starters were “from places such as Nebraska” and were asked “to mail a folder to a target in major cities, such as Boston” (paragraph 3). That makes A incorrect.

B does echo a part of the passage. In paragraph 5, the author mentions that people sometimes just didn’t “bother sending the letters on. That was Milgram’s explanation.” Given that the prior paragraph establishes that “few of his folders reached their targets” (paragraph 4), the implication in paragraph 5 is that Milgram may have thought that at least some of the folders that didn’t reach their targets could have supported his theory. Milgram is therefore downplaying the low number of folders that reached their targets by suggesting that the number itself is unimportant. That is analogous to B, since both involve stopping a chain of transmission (sending a letter on = repeating a rumor), and Milgram wanted to ignore those letters that didn’t make it to their targets, just as B describes ignoring the failure of the rumor to keep transmitting. That’s more than enough to make B correct.

Milgram didn’t offer financial incentives, so C can’t be right.

Milgram didn’t submit his data for mathematical analysis, so D has to be wrong as well.

To answer this question, I need to take what I know of Watts’s model and see how its reasoning could apply to an analogous situation: in this case, the spread of a disease. Going back to paragraph 6, Watts’s model notes that “Random connectors in a network, such as especially sociable people who have friends across subcultures, can vastly decrease the distance between points in a network.” If sociable people can connect with many people, then they can also likely help a disease spread rapidly. That should be enough for an answer.

A works as a right answer for this question. Both A and Watts imply that a few people could have contact with many.

B is immediately suspicious to me because of its use of the extreme word “all,” and it’s definitely wrong just because Watts doesn’t say anything about equal distribution.

C is supposed to be tempting because it uses “subcultures”: a word mentioned when the passage discusses Watts’s model. But Watts’s model doesn’t say anything about a number of subcultures, or how isolated they are. That’s more than enough dissimilarity to make C incorrect.

I can determine this is incorrect by retranslating D into the language of the passage. If I were to say that it is very unlikely that people who do not know each other are not going to be connected as the “small world” concept suggests, then that directly contradicts the entire reason why the author brings up Watts in paragraph 6: “There is some evidence that Milgram might be right despite his own research.”

Paragraph 5 raises both Milgram’s defense for why his results are valid despite the fact that so few letters made it back to him, and the author’s response to that defense: that each folder was “an official-looking document with heavy blue binding and a gold logo. If the subjects knew how to reach the targets, they probably would have.” The author is implying here that people are more likely to follow the instructions of something which looks official.

A is exactly what I predicted, so I can choose it and move on.

The author is actually implying the opposite: that the folders would have likely given participants a clear idea of what they were supposed to do with them. This is important for the author, since it helps support the idea that Milgram’s experiment is flawed, and may not show what Milgram claims. B is therefore incorrect.

Again, C is almost the opposite of what the author is saying. The author implies that a chain letter would have had even less of a chance of helping Milgram than what Milgram sent out.

I can easily eliminate D because the author never says anything about what works “best.” It’s always a good idea to pay attention to what intensifiers authors use in the passage, since wrong answers will often just contain an intensifier that the passage cannot support.

The passage discussion of why Spencer was so popular in America happens in the first paragraph, so I should refresh my memory of that part of the passage: “his works were celebrated as powerful justifications for laissez-faire capitalism. Competition was preordained; its result was progress; and institutions that stood in the way of individual liberties violated the natural order. Thanks to Spencer, Victorian capitalists knew that nature was on their side.” In other words, Spencer was celebrated by those who would celebrate laissez-faire capitalism: rich capitalists who were able to triumph over their competitors.I. In that light, I makes some sense, since having a lot of rich people in America who benefited from a system that was so much in harmony with Spencer’s teachings would explain why America was so into Spencer.

II. II doesn’t make sense, though, since not only does the first paragraph lack any support for social responsibility, the reference to “institutions that stood in the way of individual liberties” implies that Spencer did not really emphasize social responsibility. This is confirmed in paragraph 6, where the author claims that Spencer attacked government programs that were based on, and encouraged, social responsibility: “Governments had no obligation, or even right, to compel vaccination or education, keep small children from sweeping chimneys, mandate the construction of sewers, or relieve poverty.” That’s about as anti-social-responsibility as you can get.

III. As for III, Darwin is also not mentioned in paragraph 1, so I know the right answer won’t include it. In fact, the author would later suggest in paragraph 5 that III is absurd, since Spencer predates Darwin: “He has been tagged as a social Darwinist but it is more correct to think of Darwin as a biological Spencerian.” So the right answer should only include I.

A matches my prediction, so I can choose it and move on.

III contradicts paragraph 5, so it’s incorrect.

II Contradicts paragraph 6, so C is incorrect.

And both II and III are wrong, so D is definitely wrong.

This is a paradox question: one that asks me to identify two aspects of Spencer’s behavior that seem to be at odds in the passage. Given that the entire passage is on Spencer’s beliefs, this is a tough question to predict an answer for. Luckily, for the most part, the wrong answers for this kind of question are wrong because they aren’t mentioned in the passage, so I should try to eliminate my way through the answer choices while checking to see if 1) the two terms in the answer choice are mentioned in the passage, and 2) if one can reasonably describe them as in tension with each other.

A is easy to eliminate because Spencer doesn’t clearly dislike wealth in the passage. In fact, in paragraph 4, Spencer is described as admiring America’s “material achievements,” that is, the wealth and productivity that its approach to work produced.

The passage never offers evolutionary evidence against capitalism, so B is wrong.

There is no sense in the passage that Spencer thought himself inferior to anyone, so C is gone.

That leaves D, and while D is so mundane that I probably wouldn’t have predicted it, both parts of the answer choice are in the passage, and they are in tension with each other. Spencer is described as trying to avoid “social excitement” in paragraph 2, which means avoiding public appearances, so his decision to appear before the public while wanting to be away from the public eye is indeed a paradox that is in the passage. D is therefore correct.

A broad reading of the passage suggests that this virtue has something to do with Spencer’s theories about competition, but that doesn’t feel like quite enough to base a prediction on. I know that the substance of Spencer’s speech is in paragraph 4, which is where the reference to America’s “natural virtue” is. There, the author states that “He felt that, for Americans, work was a pathological obsession that endangered mental and physical health. He said it was time to “preach the gospel of relaxation.” Having administered that slap to the face of national virtue, Spencer returned to England.” The clear insult there is his claiming that Americans treated work like a “pathological obsession,” so the national virtue must be the American willingness to work.

Charities are mentioned elsewhere in the passage, but not in relation to Spencer’s speech, so A is wrong.

B, though, works, because “livelihood” is another word for work. B is close enough to my prediction that I would choose it and move on.

The passage never opposes competition or hard work, and there is definitely no such opposition mentioned in Spencer’s speech in paragraph 4, so this has to be wrong.

D is also not mentioned in paragraph 4, so D’s also wrong.

The right answer to this question will be a question that the passage has no answer for. So the only way to answer this question is to go through each answer choice, and try to answer each question with just passage arguments.

One of the major surprises in the passage comes at the beginning of paragraph 4. After showing how much Americans loved Spencer, the author states that “Instead of graciously accepting these tributes, Spencer told his admirers that they had seriously misunderstood him.” Since the rest of the passage is devoted to explain just how Americans had misunderstood Spencer—that is, how little they grasped his ideas—A has to be incorrect.

B refers to paragraph 6, which definitely does say that the government shouldn’t build sewers. However, I have no idea who Spencer would say should build those systems. Indeed, nothing in the passage does either, which makes B correct.

This is covered in paragraph 6: “relief from the state, while engendering responsibility in recipients, embittered those whose resources funded it.” That relief would necessarily have to come from affluent people who fund state programs. C is therefore wrong.

The author answers this in paragraph 4, when Spencer claimed that there were downsides to working so hard: that that mindset was equivalent to “a pathological obsession that endangered mental and physical health.” That’s more than enough to make D incorrect.

Having referred to paragraph 2 multiple times in this passage, I know that Spencer “had come to the U.S. to reinvigorate his ‘greatly disordered nervous system.’” Since that involved avoiding “social excitement,” one can imagine he intended to relax by himself somewhere in America.

Writing a book isn’t mentioned in paragraph 2. In fact, the passage suggests the opposite; if “Spencer detested public speaking, and he no longer needed money, thanks to the immense popularity of his books,” he also lacked a financial reason to write a new book. So A is likely wrong.

Nothing in the passage mentions modifications to his theories, so B is incorrect.

C fits my prediction, so I should choose it and move on.

I don’t see anything that explains how long Spencer planned to stay in the U.S., so D has to be wrong.

This specific scenario is mentioned in paragraph 6, where he discusses charity: “Individual charity might refine the character of the donor.” In other words, it will make the donor a better person, and have better moral sensibilities.

A is close enough to my prediction, because it is one way to describe a more refined character: someone who places more emphasis on virtue. Still, A’s not exactly what I predicted, so I should go through and eliminate the other answer choices.

The passage depicts Spencer as thinking that individual charity benefits the giver, but it also depicts Spencer as disliking social responsibility, so it’s hard to see how Spencer would think B. B is therefore incorrect.

C is actually wrong for the same reason B is: because Spencer seemed to dislike the very notion of social responsibility. Given that condition, Spencer would not likely think that charity would have anything to do with social responsibility.

D is easy to eliminate because the author doesn’t mention guilt when discussing Spencer’s view on charity.

Another nice simple passage check question. Darwin is raised in paragraph 5, where the author explains that people tend to think of Spencer as Darwinian, when in fact Spencer predates Darwin. The information in the question stem would strengthen the author’s argument in that paragraph, then, since Darwin is so famous for the phrase “survival of the fittest.” I should therefore look for an answer which suggests that.

It is true that the phrase is not mentioned in the passage, it doesn’t have to be in order for the information in the question stem to affect the passage. After all, whoever said the phrase first would affect the author’s argument that Spencer predates Darwin, and that Darwin is “a biological Spencerian” (paragraph 5).

I don’t see how the information in the question stem weakens this claim, since Darwin could have easily restricted his use of the phrase to biology. B is therefore wrong.

C, though, fits my prediction, since describing Darwin as a “biological Spencerian” is the author’s pithy way of summing up the argument in paragraph 5: that we shouldn’t think of Spencer as a social Darwinist. C is therefore correct.

I can see why this would be an attractive choice, given how people see Darwin’s insights about the survival of the fittest as important. But taken on its own, I’m not sure that I can say that just because Spencer came up with the phrase first, that makes him someone with a powerful intellect. It is entirely possible that he may have coined the phrase saying something stupid, for example. Since there’s just too many logical leaps I have to make to make D attractive, D has to be wrong.

The mindset in question is given in paragraph 3: “Critics have somehow re-conceptualized themselves as midwives to the artistic process, whose task is to encourage artists and respectfully offer them suggestions.” So I know the author is suggesting that trying to support artists is an attempt to correct for missing “the point about the best art of their generation.” This is clarified by paragraph 4, in which the very strong and definite opinions of critics were wrong time and time again about many of the painters that we now consider to be among the best. So the author here must be trying to make a point about critics today being too afraid to form definite opinions about art: “To sit in judgment on works of art is not their job” (paragraph 3).

If anything, the author seems to think that artists care too much about what today’s artists are trying to do. Such is implied when the author claims that critics see themselves as “midwives to the artistic process”: people who are there to help artists to give birth to their creations. A therefore has to be wrong.

At no point does the author suggest that critics are “too impressed by creativity.” I’m not even quite sure what that specifically means. At the very least, nothing about creativity is mentioned in relation to the quote from paragraph 4, so I can eliminate B.

C fits my description. The author accuses critics in paragraph 3 of changing their understanding of the role of the critic. Paragraph 4 explains why that change happened: because critics got their strong opinions wrong so often that “Better a thousand nonentities should be heralded as the new Picasso than that the new Picasso should be met with scorn or neglect!” (paragraph 4). That makes C the right answer.

The author doesn’t say what standards are “usually” applied to art, or that the critics are unaware of them, so D is wrong.

To answer this question, I need to determine what effect the information in the question stem would have on the passage. Since the author clearly dislikes the fine art that is now produced, I can predict that the right answer will say something about how it just means that more Americans are wrong about art.

Nothing in the question stem suggests that there isn’t a sort of creative recession occurring in art. The entire passage is about how critics are praising art that is bad; more people saying that they like bad art won’t make the art better. A is therefore wrong.

Debate isn’t really discussed in the passage, so I can eliminate B.

If anything, the author’s negative comments about the current state of art would be more justified by the information in the question stem.

D fits my description. The new information would make the author angry at both most Americans and critics, so more people would be the target of the author’s criticism.

This is another question that is asking me to assess the effect of the new information in the question stem. What’s striking about that new information is that it describes American critics being definitive: that is, not being as timid as the author claims in paragraph 3 and 5. If this new information is true, that directly undermines the author’s claim that critics are at least partly to blame for how much bad art we now have. That should hopefully be enough of a prediction to find an answer.

The author is concerned that the American public is going too easy on artists. Critics having strong opinions doesn’t necessarily strengthen or weaken that idea; the effect of the new information in the question stem would depend on exactly what those characteristics were. Since I can’t clearly correlate the new information in the question stem with A, I can eliminate A.

I can’t see how B makes sense. The reference to the Times involves critics who provide positive reviews of art. That could mean that they already have strong opinions about what makes art good or bad. There’s no obvious misunderstanding here, so B is wrong.

C resonates with my prediction. If the new information in the question stem suggests that artists may not be responsible for how much bad art we have today, that’s just another way of saying that the critics have less influence on art and artists than the author thinks. C is therefore correct.

Having strong opinions about what is good and bad art doesn’t necessarily say anything about whether or not American art is good or bad. Like A, I can’t make sense of D without knowing what the critics mentioned in the question stem think is good or bad art; that’s too much ambiguity for D to be the correct answer.

To answer this question, I need to be sure I have a strong enough grasp of what the author is saying about art and critics to generalize that logic, in order to apply it to the automobile industry. The heart of the author’s complaint about what’s happening with art seems to be in paragraph 3, when the author blames the artistic recession on “the pervasive and unchecked reverence in which art is held by critics. The most striking feature of recent artistic discourse, the quality that sets it apart from all earlier discussion, is its chronic unwillingness to address the weaknesses inherent in the productions of our artists.” In other words, art critics are praising art, and are not pointing out its flaws. That should be enough to find a correct answer.

A describes manufacturers as a bit more active than art critics in the passage. The art critics aren’t lying about artists; they’re just choosing to play up their positives and avoid talking about their negatives. A is therefore wrong.

I don’t remember much about personal experience in the passage, and there is nothing about personal experience in that quote from paragraph 3, so I can safely eliminate B.

C is the exact opposite of that quote from paragraph 3, so C is wrong.

That leaves D, and D is clearly right. Emphasizing the advantages of car models is analogous to “the pervasive and unchecked reverence in which art is held by critics.” I can choose D and move on.

Film critics are only mentioned once in the passage: in the middle of paragraph 3, where the author states that “One can hardly imagine the book, film, theater, music, or even food critics of the Times succumbing to such a degree of chinlessness.” The author here is referring to art critics who wrote favorable reviews: specifically the complaint that “the praise tended to be of the tepid, hedging, irresolute variety.” If the author is complaining about how irresolute art critics are, and then says that film critics would not succumb “to such a degree of chinlessness,” then the author must think that film critics will be more resolute: more certain of their opinions, and more willing to write them out.

A fits, since “forthright” is a synonym of “resolute.” I can choose A and move on.

The author clearly dislikes what art critics are doing while implying that film critics must be doing something better, but liking or disliking something doesn’t necessarily mean that one respects that thing. Respect isn’t mentioned anywhere in that part of the passage, so B has to be wrong.

C has the same problem as B: the author doesn’t talk about pretentiousness, so C is wrong.

The author clearly dislikes what art critics are doing, but it is entirely possible that those critics could still be qualified. Since qualifications aren’t explicitly discussed in paragraph 3, I can’t justify choosing it. D is therefore wrong.