After several attempts to distract his young parrot from chewing on fu

B as it clearly defines from.para 1 that physical action was not required as the bird's action doesn't hurt itself

From para 2 that same action helps rectify action when it can hurt the animal

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Here we are evaluating the argument to strengthen it.

Claim 1: Animal action not harmful for an animal - Trainer hits - Animal develops a phobia

Claim 2: Animal action is harmful for the animal - Trainer hits - Animal develops a phobia.

From claims 1 and 2, it is clear that the trainer would hit animal only if the actions of the animal are harmful for itself.

This thought is reflected in option B and hence is the answer.

After several attempts to distract his young parrot from chewing on furniture, George reluctantly took an expert’s advice and gently hit the parrot’s beak whenever the bird started to chew furniture. The bird stopped chewing furniture, but it is now afraid of hands and will sometimes bite. Since chewing on the furniture would not have hurt the bird, George should not have hit it.

When Carla’s puppy escaped from her yard, it bounded into a busy street. Although Carla does not generally approve of physical discipline, she hit the puppy sharply with her hand. Now the puppy enters the street only when accompanied by Carla, so Carla was justified in disciplining the puppy.

Which one of the following principles, if established, would justify the judgments about George’s and Carla’s actions?


(A) When disciplining an animal physically, a trainer should use an object such as a rolled up newspaper to avoid making the animal frightened of hands.

(B) When training an animal, physical discipline should be used only when such discipline is necessary to correct behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal.
--> Correct. For George, "Since chewing on the furniture would not have hurt the bird, George should not have hit it." shows that chewing does not hurt the bird, so George should have not done that. This means that if the behavior does not result in serious harm to the animal, one should not hit the animal. Whereas for Carla's case, the situation could result in serious harm to the animal.

(C) Using physical discipline to train an animal is justified only when all alternative strategies for correcting undesirable behavior have failed.

(D) Physical discipline should not be used on immature animals.

(E) Physical discipline should not be used by an animal trainer except to correct persistent behavior problems.

GMATNinja How does B justify George's behaviour?

Hi Priyanshu

Let me try to address your query.

Option (B) states: When training an animal, physical discipline should be used only when such discipline is necessary to correct behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal.

The question does not ask us to justify George's behavior. It asks us to justify "the judgments about George’s and Carla’s actions". The judgement in the stimulus about George's action is that "George should not have hit it". So we are looking for an option that supports this view.

As per option (B), physical discipline should only be used to avoid serious harm. Since George's parrot was not at such risk, as per option (B) physical discipline should not have been used, which is consistent with the judgement made in the stimulus. Thus this satisfies the requirement.

Hope this helps.

From Powerscore:

e're asked for an answer choice that would justify both George's and Carla's actions. Answer choice (C) states, "Using physical discipline to train an animal is justified only when all alternative strategies for correcting undesirable behavior have failed." We can then see if this would justify the judgments about their actions.

George:
Carla:
Answer choice (C) doesn't seem to clearly justify either of their actions. We're told that George made "several attempts to distract" his parrot, which falls short of him taking "all alternative strategies." In addition, there's no indication that Carla exhausted "all alternative strategies." This answer choice therefore doesn't clearly do anything to the conclusions reached about their actions, namely, the conclusions that George's actions were not justified and Carla's actions were justified.

George: ?
Carla: ?
By contrast, answer choice (B) states, "When training an animal, physical discipline should be used only when such discipline is necessary to correct behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal." Using conditional reasoning, we could diagram this as:

physical discipline ok :arrow: avert harm to animal
If a given instance of physical discipline was ok/justified, then it must have done to avert harm to the animal. The contrapositive of this would be:

avert harm to animal :arrow: physical discipline ok
This would justify the conclusion that George should not have hit his parrot--his action was not done to avert harm to the animal, therefore it was not justified (the contrapositive). The language of (B) also suggests a biconditional relationship:

avert harm to animal :dbl: physical discipline ok
That is, if an action (of physical discipline) was done to avert harm to the animal, then that physical discipline was ok. And if a given act of physical discipline was ok, that means it must have been done to avert harm to the animal. Based on this language, Carla was justified in disciplining her puppy because her action stopped behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal. Answer choice (B) thus justifies the conclusion that George should not have hit his bird but that Carla was justified in hitting her puppy.

After several attempts to distract his young parrot from chewing on furniture, George reluctantly took an expert’s advice and gently hit the parrot’s beak whenever the bird started to chew furniture. The bird stopped chewing furniture, but it is now afraid of hands and will sometimes bite. Since chewing on the furniture would not have hurt the bird, George should not have hit it.

When Carla’s puppy escaped from her yard, it bounded into a busy street. Although Carla does not generally approve of physical discipline, she hit the puppy sharply with her hand. Now the puppy enters the street only when accompanied by Carla, so Carla was justified in disciplining the puppy.

Which one of the following principles, if established, would justify the judgments about George’s and Carla’s actions?

(A) When disciplining an animal physically, a trainer should use an object such as a rolled up newspaper to avoid making the animal frightened of hands. - WRONG. Nothing as such is suggested in the passage. Would not justify using hands.

(B) When training an animal, physical discipline should be used only when such discipline is necessary to correct behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal. - CORRECT. POE helps. serious harm to animals is good enough a reason for G and C to hit animals.

(C) Using physical discipline to train an animal is justified only when all alternative strategies for correcting undesirable behavior have failed. - WRONG. Interesting but there are no alternative methods discussed. Had there been even a slight hint of alternatives then this one would have made sense.

(D) Physical discipline should not be used on immature animals. - WRONG. Since both hit the animals this one would not justify.

(E) Physical discipline should not be used by an animal trainer except to correct persistent behavior problems. - WRONG. Like D only.

Answer B.