In an experiment, capuchin monkeys watched Person A refuse Person B's request to help open a jar of food. Afterward,...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
In an experiment, capuchin monkeys watched Person A refuse Person B's request to help open a jar of food. Afterward, each monkey could select which of the two people to accept food from. The monkeys accepted food less often from the unhelpful person, Person A, than from Person B. The researchers concluded that capuchin monkeys generally prefer to avoid unhelpful individuals.
In order to evaluate the support provided for the researchers' conclusion, it would be most helpful to know whether
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| In an experiment, capuchin monkeys watched Person A refuse Person B's request to help open a jar of food. |
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| Afterward, each monkey could select which of the two people to accept food from. |
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| The monkeys accepted food less often from the unhelpful person, Person A, than from Person B. |
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| The researchers concluded that capuchin monkeys generally prefer to avoid unhelpful individuals. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument moves from describing an experimental setup where monkeys observe helpful vs unhelpful behavior, to showing the results of monkey food choices, and finally to a broad conclusion about monkey preferences. The flow is: experimental design → results → interpretation.
Main Conclusion:
Capuchin monkeys generally prefer to avoid unhelpful individuals.
Logical Structure:
The researchers use one specific experiment as evidence to support a general claim about monkey behavior. They're saying: because monkeys chose food less often from the unhelpful person in this one scenario, we can conclude that monkeys generally avoid unhelpful individuals. This is a jump from specific experimental results to a broader behavioral pattern.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Evaluate - We need to think of assumptions and create evaluation scenarios that either strengthen or weaken the conclusion when taken to an extreme
Precision of Claims
The conclusion claims capuchin monkeys 'generally prefer to avoid unhelpful individuals' - this is a broad behavioral generalization based on one specific experimental scenario involving food acceptance choices
Strategy
For evaluate questions, we need to identify what additional information would help us judge whether the experimental results actually support the broad conclusion. We should think about potential gaps or alternative explanations that, if addressed, would either strengthen or weaken our confidence in the researchers' conclusion. The key is finding assumptions the researchers made that we'd want to test.
This talks about a second experiment where Person A is helpful to Person B. While this might provide some additional data, it doesn't directly address the key question of whether the monkeys' original preference for Person B was specifically caused by witnessing unhelpful behavior versus other factors. We need to evaluate the original conclusion, not gather more similar data points.
This focuses on the helpful dispositions of the monkeys themselves and how they interact with other monkeys. However, the researchers' conclusion is about how monkeys respond to unhelpful humans, not about monkey-to-monkey interactions or individual monkey personalities. This information wouldn't help us evaluate whether the experimental results support the conclusion about avoiding unhelpful individuals.
This mentions whether researchers considered that monkeys might not understand the refusal. While comprehension could be relevant, this choice only asks whether researchers 'considered' this possibility, not whether it actually affected the results. Knowing what researchers thought about doesn't help us evaluate the validity of their conclusion based on the actual experimental evidence.
This is the correct answer. This directly tests a crucial assumption in the researchers' reasoning. The researchers assume that the monkeys' preference for Person B over Person A was caused by witnessing the unhelpful behavior. However, if monkeys would prefer Person B even when no interaction occurred, this would suggest their preference wasn't specifically due to avoiding unhelpful behavior but might be due to other factors (maybe Person B just looks more trustworthy, or there are random preferences). This information would be extremely helpful in evaluating whether the observed results actually support the conclusion about avoiding unhelpful individuals.
This asks about other monkey species' responses in similar conditions. While interesting for comparative purposes, this doesn't help us evaluate whether the conclusion about capuchin monkeys is supported by the specific experimental evidence presented. The question is about evaluating the support for the researchers' conclusion about capuchin monkeys, not about broader patterns across species.