#4 - Two randomly selected group of 30 adults

[Robert Carroll]

queenbee,

Answer choice (A) does nothing to resolve the paradox. The group that was told they would get cash prizes wrote worse. We need to explain that. This is a resolve, so new information is fine (and should be expected) in the correct answer. So when the explanation says that one group was motivated to write poorly, that is anticipating the new information the answer will say. No one is saying the stimulus already says that there was a motivation to write poorly. That's going to be part of our anticipated explanation.

In fact, scrolling up and seeing that, I see that Adam is describing that as what answer choice (B) is doing, so even Adam is not saying that comes from the stimulus. He's saying it came from the answer, which is spot-on.

Showing little creativity certainly provides some explanation for why the judges didn't like the stories! So that part of answer choice (B) looks good.

I don't see where you're getting the idea that one group might have balked at the money, and thus purposely done worse - which answer choice is that coming from?

Robert Carroll

[queenbee]

Hi
I was thinking about why the cash prize did not motivate them to write a better story. I though one explanation would be that $1.00 cash prize is not worth the effort. Then other team didnt know about this, so they didnt have any reason to be insulted. perhaps i am getting too deep into the stories.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi queenbee!

Let's take your example of a prize of $1.00. If the prize was $1, this wouldn't explain why the group that was told that there was a cash prize scored lower in the ranking by judges in comparison with the group that was not told about a cash prize. I take your point instead to be more specifically that the group that was notified about the cash prize was also told its amount, and thus might have been insulted and, in turn, scored lower. That seems to make sense. However, while this looks close to answer choice (A), note that (A) doesn't state anything about the group being told or otherwise aware of the size of the cash prize.

Rather, answer choice (B) states, "People writing to win prizes show a greater than usual tendency to produce stereotypical stories that show little creativity." If this were true, it explains how the incentive of the cash prize alone (without regard to size) is connected to ranking lower, namely, because the cash prize incentivizes more tendencies toward stereotypical stories involving little creativity.