#6 - Some psychologists claim that empathic responses are forms of moral behavior.

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[saimamidala23@gmail.com]

I struggled with this one a lot and ended up picking E. While I know E isn't a good answer because "some adults" could also give the same unsophisticated verbal responses as children, I couldn't wrap my head around D. Why does the distinction between actual vs hypothetical matter? That was never talked about in the stimulus.

[Dana D]

Hey Saimamideala,

The second group of psychologists said that children can't display moral behavior "on the basis of their unsophisticated verbal responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas." Based on that behavior alone, the second group concluded kids lack the moral reasoning skill necessary for their behavior to be considered moral. However, answer choice (D) says that in actual situations, the kids displayed a much higher level of moral reasoning, potentially calling into question the results of that second group of researchers. Maybe the group of kids the 2nd group studied just didn't have a high level of moral reasoning, or maybe the gravity of the situation being real and not hypothetical showed that kids had that capacity all along, but either way, the conclusion of the 2nd group has been weakened.

[domthedestroyer]

I was down to D and E, and chose E even though I wasn't that confident, however, I thought D was definitely more flawed. I figured that how the kids acted in real situations didn't matter because one of the key facets of allowing something to be dubbed a "moral behavior" was the ability of the individual who engaged in that behavior to articulate well (aka have a "sophisticated verbal response") as to why they performed that behavior. So whether or not the kids displayed a much higher level of reasoning in real life didn't matter if they couldn't offer sophisticated reasons for doing so. I don't see how this undermines the second group of psychologists' argument. Where am I going wrong?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi dom,

Let's start with the problem with Answer E. Nowhere in the stimulus does it say that all adults do exhibit moral behavior, so the fact that some adults respond in a similar way to children does not imply that the children do have moral behavior. It could be that these adults simply lack the requirements for moral behavior that are given in the stimulus.

As for Answer D, first, nowhere in this answer does it state that the children gave unsophisticated answers to the real world situations. The only mention of unsophisticated answers was in the stimulus, which were specifically referring to the hypothetical situations.

The whole point of Answer D is to show that the children's answers to real world situations were different than to the hypothetical situations, specifically that these answers "display a much higher level of moral reasoning." What this means is that these answers were more sophisticated (in a moral reasoning sense) than the answers to the hypothetical questions. What all of this is getting at is that the children didn't really "get" or understand/process the hypothetical situations, but they were able to exhibit moral reasoning in real world situations. Since the second group's conclusion is that kids lack the ability to exhibit moral reasoning at all, showing that they can exhibit it in real world situations weakens this conclusion.