#18 - Etiquette helps people to get along with each other.

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[louisek]

I understand why C is right, but I don't understand why A is wrong. To me, the info in the stim equally supports A and C. Can someone explain why C is more strongly supported than A? Thank you!

[Robert Carroll]

Louise,

The reason answer choice (A) is not supported is that, in order for people's beliefs in this case to be contradictory, they would have to believe that etiquette has beneficial effects. The "many people" in the third sentence believe etiquette has no beneficial effects. If they also believed it has beneficial effects, that would be contradictory. The author claims, also in that third sentence, that these same people believe kindness and social harmony are good. So, because anything producing a "good" thing is also something with a "beneficial effect," if etiquette produces kindness, social harmony, or both, then etiquette would have beneficial effects...but who's saying that? The author is saying that. The "many people" of the third sentence may not realize that etiquette has those effects, or they may think the author is wrong about the effects. So those people are not entertaining contradictory beliefs - they believe one thing, the author believes another. For answer choice (A) to be correct, the same "many people" would have to have two different beliefs about etiquette's effects. That just doesn't happen here.

Robert Carroll

[Ssouki]

Hello,

Regarding question 18; Etiquette helps people..., I am struggling in eliminating both A and B. Why is C the correct answer?

Thank you!
Sara

[Adam Tyson]

I'll add to Robert's explanation of answer A for you, Ssouki, and say that there is nothing in the stimulus to suggest that kindness and social harmony have anything to do with etiquette. So, there no reason to believe that those many people believe that etiquette has those particular beneficial effects. They could very well believe that etiquette has no benefits, and kindness has no relationship to etiquette.

Same problem with B here - there is nothing in the stimulus to suggest that anyone has respect for etiquette. Just because they recognize the value of kindness and social harmony doesn't mean they think those things are in any way connected to etiquette.

Answer C is at least somewhat supported here, because the author says that etiquette does prevent offense, and it's reasonable to connect that idea to the concept of social harmony - people getting along rather than offending one another. Therefore, those people that think social harmony is good are wrong about etiquette having no benefits, because it does, according to the author at least, lead to something that those people find to be beneficial.

Tough question, subtle answer!

[Leela]

Adam, your explanation is very helpful. Thanks!

I got so caught up with balancing "beneficial effects" vs. "kindness and social harmony," that I found myself concentrating most of my energy on the second half of the stimulus, consequently giving less attention to the "for example..." portion, which is key for the correct answer.

[snowy]

Why is E wrong?

[Erik Shum]

Hi Snowy,

Good question: answer choice (E) is very appealing to many students because it certainly sounds like something the author of the stimulus believes but we have to pay close attention to the stem and one adjective in the answer choice to understand why answer choice (E) is incorrect.

Answer choice (E) is not strongly supported by the stimulus because there is no reason to conclude from the stimulus that kindness and social harmony are highly beneficial. The stimulus does not provide any indication about the magnitude of kindness and social harmony's benefits to society.

Further, if you read closely, we do not know if kindness and social harmony are objectively beneficial to society; we only know that "many people" think that kindness and social harmony are good.

[cornflakes]

Tacking on here - Took me a while to interpret this one on A versus C but I think I finally see it.

The primary difference between A and C is this "contradictory" versus "mistaken" idea. In my timed pass of this on my PT, I didn't even realize that "preventing one another from offending each other" and "kindness and social harmony" were linked (I'm a pretty dense individual, so I rarely catch those things.)

In any event - the key here is noticing that many people don't necessarily have views that are contradictory about etiquette because they don't explicitly link their approval of kindness and social harmony to etiquette. While these two things are clearly direct results of etiquette, as evidenced by the 2nd sentence in the stimulus, we can't fix that origin to the "many people." In order to make A work, we would have to have information that these many people acknowledge the fact that kindness and social harmony derive from etiquette. That type of answer would produce something like ~ "many people criticize etiquette because it has no beneficial effects for society, but these same people think that kindness and social harmony, which derive directly from etiquette, are good (for society). Short of the long here, however, is that we don't have this assurance about the many people and their PERSONALLY HELD beliefs about where the good things they support derived from.

C, on the other hand, does something similar to A, but does so in a way that does not require assumptions. It says this same group of many people is "mistaken" - they are mistaken because etiquette is sufficient to produce social harmony and kindness, which the many people purport to be beneficial to society. So, these many people are mistaken in their belief regarding etiquette having no beneficial effects on society, without holding contradictory beliefs about etiquette itself.

[cornflakes]

Looking at this another way too - even though conditional reasoning isn't present here, we could model it in that way to make better sense of the situation .

2nd Sentence: Etiquette --> people don't inadvertently offend each other ( which is a natural proxy for social harmony and kindness

Many People: Social harmony and kindness are good

What answer A wants us to do is actually a mistaken reversal: social harmony and kindness good --> etiquette good (beneficial effects on society) - which would then directly contradict the statement about etiquette having no beneficial impacts on society. This is the crux of why, in my view, we cannot attach the many people's believe of social harmony and kindness being good to etiquette being good.

It's not a perfect use of conditional reasoning, but I think it serves a useful role in helping to make a bit more sense of an otherwise tricky question.