Psychological research indicates that college hockey and football play

Research indicates that college hockey and football players are more quickly moved to hostility and aggression than are college athletes in noncontact sports such as swimming.
Researchers’ conclusion—that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive

The football and hockey players were probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than the swimmers.
Author's Conclusion - The researchers conclusion is untenable.

Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the conclusion drawn by the psychological researchers?

We are to ignore the author's conclusion and focus only on researcher's conclusion. We need to strengthen that contact sports encourage and teach hostility and aggression.

(A) The football and hockey players became more hostile and aggressive during the season and remained so during the off-season, whereas there was no increase in aggressiveness among the swimmers.

Hostility increases during season and then stays put during off season too. Next season it would increase again and then stay at that level during off season. So it does seem to say that contact sports makes participants more hostile.

(B) The football and hockey players, but not the swimmers, were aware at the start of the experiment that they were being tested for aggressiveness.

We don't know how the players reacted to this knowledge.

(C) The same psychological research indicated that the football and hockey players had a great respect for cooperation and team play, whereas the swimmers were most concerned with excelling as individual competitors.

Irrelevant. We are discussing hostility aspect only.

(D) The research studies were designed to include no college athletes who participated in both contact and noncontact sports.

People who participate in both are irrelevant.

(E) Throughout the United States, more incidents of fan violence occur at baseball games than occur at hockey or football games.

Baseball is irrelevant.

Answer (A)­
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'D' clarifies a significant point of contention by stating that none of the players included in study played both types of sports.
Thus, by clarifying a possible point of contention, it strengthens the issue.

Infact, 'A' which is allegedly the correct answer seems to be hurting the main conclusion. It implies that sports such as Hockey cause increase in aggression which might be carried offseason as well. whereas, the main point of the stimulus is, people who are aggressive to begin with, take up sports such as hockey.

I went with (A). We're asked to strenghthen the psychologist's conclusion, which is some sport will prompt aggressiveness while other sports don't.

(A) shows that football and hockey does prompt that agressiveness since the players remained aggressive even after the season.

(C) talks about the respect that players have for teamplay and cooperation; this, to me, is irrelanvant in terms of how we can strenghthen the conclusion made by the psychologists.

The researchers’ conclusion is that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive. In A, the increase in aggressiveness can be attributed to the sports. During the season, there is an increase in the aggression of the players. For swimmers, there is no such aggression. Thus football and hockey (contact sports) were responsible for the increase in aggression but swimming (non-contact sports) did not cause any such increase. Thus A strengthens the argument.

If I am not wrong, the red line portion marked above is the conclusion and we are asked to strengthen that one. that is why the correct answer should be A, which strengthen the conclusion..

Conclusion: The researchers’ conclusion—that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive—is untenable
Premise: The football and hockey players were probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than the swimmers.

We want to strengthen the conclusion that college hockey and football players are more quickly moved to hostility and aggression than are college athletes in noncontact sports such as swimming

In other words, we want to strengthen the claim that hockey/football make people more aggressive

So let's check out our AC.

(A) The football and hockey players became more hostile and aggressive during the season and remained so during the off-season, whereas there was no increase in aggressiveness among the swimmers.---> Could be, its saying that people are aggressive whether they are playing or not. But, still we don't really know if this was something caused by the sport or not.
(B) The football and hockey players, but not the swimmers, were aware at the start of the experiment that they were being tested for aggressiveness. --> Out of scope
(C) The same psychological research indicated that the football and hockey players had a great respect for cooperation and team play, whereas the swimmers were most concerned with excelling as individual competitors.--> Doesn't say much, in any case it would say something like swimmers are in fact more agressive than the other guys. I don't really feel that confortable with this answer.
(D) The research studies were designed to include no college athletes who participated in both contact and noncontact sports.---> Out of scope
(E) Throughout the United States, more incidents of fan violence occur at baseball games than occur at hockey or football games---> Out of scope

Final veredict: While I don't really like any of the answer choices, I suspect that A could be the right one because it is closest to what we need to strengthen.

If anyone comes up with any additional clues on this question please let me know and I'll throw some Kudos!

Hope it helps
Cheers!
J

Definite A.

We are asked to strengthen the conclusion drawn by psychological researchers not the author of this CR.
Conclusion: Contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive

CONCLUSION( OVERALL):- The researchers’ conclusion—that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive—is untenable.INFACT THE HCOKEY PLAYERS ARE NATURALLY HOSTILE IN COMPARISON TO SWIMMERS...
CONCLUSION OF RESEARCHER- contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive--- WE HAVE TO STRENGHTHEN THIS ONE...

(A) The football and hockey players became more hostile and aggressive during the season and remained so during the off-season, whereas there was no increase in aggressiveness among the swimmers. MEANS THEY WERE NATURALLY AGGRESIVE.....TO START WITH
(B) The football and hockey players, but not the swimmers, were aware at the start of the experiment that they were being tested for aggressiveness..MEANS THAT SPORT WANTS THEM TO BE AGGRESSIVE AND THEY KNOW ABOUT IT......THE SPORT DEMANDS THEM TO BE AGGRESSIVE....HENCE contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive( SAME WHAT THE RESEARCHER SAYS.......

KUDOS IF YOU PLEASE....

aragonn gmat1393 generis VeritasKarishma nightblade354

I was more comfortable crossing out incorrect ones on this, than banging my head why the left one
makes sense. Can I have your two cents?


Start with q stem, This is a strengthen question.


Conclusion: that - contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive—is flawed.
Why: Because the football and hockey players were probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than the swimmers.
OK, so football and hockey players were hostile and aggressive by nature and the games they selected to play
had no co-relationship with developing their attitude.



The only reason why I starred at this option for 1+ min and did not discard it right away was the fact that it is relevant to the argument.
However, the highlighted text talks about once the season started and how the attitude was consistent throughout the game, once started.
Whereas, my argument is concerned with the attitude (hostile and aggressiveness) with no such duration before, in the play and after the play.


Weakener, alternate cause (awareness) suggested for aggressiveness in players.


Out is scope, If I ask the question: SO WHAT to this statement, my claim does not get strengthened.


Totally irrelevant.


We are not comparing players of hockey vs those playing baseball.
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adkikani - Frankly I have also rejected A at first glance but what gave me a way is that word 'more'. Also if it just the game then in off season they would have been calm like a monk (Ok, may be not that much, but hope you got it.). I think these two evidences are good enough to prove the fact that its not the game, nut may be nature may be some thing else.





A word of advise - strengthing is not about making a choice absolutely flying. Just a nudge and if a simple momentum in right direction can also concluded as strengthhening. This question is a nice example of it. you done need to find a choice which is presenting facts that it all nature. More over if you proved that it is not game is enough, nature or not should not be your concern - may be these players have to pretend that they are aggressive but in reality they are the nicest guys to hang around, example - virat kohli.

My point is a right pre-thinking can keep your thinking in order, but thinking a bit less or more than what you should have, can break things. that is what happened here. Hope it was helpful for you.

adkikani
I think you misinterpreted the conclusion

You said:-



The above is author's conclusion.

The researcher's conclusion is :-



Based on above only A strenghtens the conclusion.

GMATNinja. I got the question right, but I have below query.

Given the conclusion -


Does Option D act as Weakener?


Because, this option raise doubt over researcher's study itself that the sample of the studies could be convenient for the conclusion. Is my understanding correct?

It is really hard to say how (D) would impact the researchers' conclusion. The researchers believe that contact sports "encourage and teach" hostile behavior based on the fact that students involved in contact sports are more quickly moved to hostility than are their classmates who play non-contact sports.

(D) tells us that the study didn't include students who participate in both types of sports. This really doesn't impact the data from the study that WAS conducted -- there is still a difference between the levels of hostility exhibited by the two groups of students that were studied. For the same reason, it also doesn't impact the researchers' conclusion that contact sports CAUSE hostile behavior.

Simply put, without more information we can't say how (D) affects the researchers' conclusion. We can say with certainty that it doesn't STRENGTHEN the conclusion, which is enough to answer the question. Anything beyond that is time better spent on the next question.

I hope that helps!
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Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the conclusion drawn by the psychological researchers?


Conclusion: contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive.
Now we need to select an option that strengthens it.


It is telling that football and Hockey players became more hostile during the season(it is saying that reason is contact sports) and stay so during off season.
Keep it until we find the next best.

If being aware makes the people aggressive and hostile,How come this related to contact sports.
Irrelevant.

So what it is not strengthening the conclusion.Actually it's doing nothing.Irrelevant
Eliminate C

Irrelevant and Option A is better than this one
Eliminate D

Out of scope.
Eliminate E

A is the winner

In this argument to strength the argument one need to search for the options which supports the causality of the argument.

A. this options says that the foot ball and hockey has created hostility in the players , this is correct answer.
B.This is kind of general information about he research which gives no relation btw the sport type and aggressiveness.
C.This option seems to say the opposite, but in my opinion team play is not related to being hostile, even if its related this statement weakens the argument
D.This also gives information about the research but nothing about the causality.
E. The relation between the other games and hockey and foot ball , doest explain about the causality , so nothing can be concluded from the argument.

If D option were:

(D) The research studies were designed to include NO college athletes who participated in both contact and noncontact sports.

Can D be a strengthener?

My Reasoning:
If a same person is in Football and Swimming, He becomes more aggressive while playing football than playing swimming. It means that it is because of sports that games have an affect on individual.

VeritasKarishma Ma'm GMATNinja : please give your opinions.

What the research did show was that football and hockey players were more aggressive than swimmers. Whether researchers included people who played both and if yes, how did they evaluate them is irrelevant. We don't know whether the same person becomes more aggressive while playing football and not while swimming. The point is that the people who play football were found to be more aggressive generally (even while not playing).
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I suppose you can chalk this up to a cause and effect argument.
Cause: Participation in contact sports
Effect: Aggression

Psychological research indicates that college hockey and football players are more quickly moved to hostility and aggression than are college athletes in noncontact sports such as swimming. But the researchers’ conclusion—that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive—is untenable. The football and hockey players were probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than the swimmers.

Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the conclusion drawn by the psychological researchers?


(A) The football and hockey players became more hostile and aggressive during the season and remained so during the off-season, whereas there was no increase in aggressiveness among the swimmers.
Correct. This shows that even when the athletes were not participating in contact sports that they were still aggressive and furthermore, that they became progressively aggressive during the season. This may be due to some underlying predisposition because we can see that even when the purported cause is NOT there, the athletes still acted disorderly.

(B) The football and hockey players, but not the swimmers, were aware at the start of the experiment that they were being tested for aggressiveness.
We don't know which direction this argument is supposed to go? Would knowing that they were being tested lead to more aggression? Less aggression?

(C) The same psychological research indicated that the football and hockey players had a great respect for cooperation and team play, whereas the swimmers were most concerned with excelling as individual competitors.
"respect for cooperation/team play" and "excelling as individuals" is completely irrelevant

(D) The research studies were designed to include no college athletes who participated in both contact and noncontact sports.
This just strengthens the validity of the study, but not the counter-argument.

(E) Throughout the United States, more incidents of fan violence occur at baseball games than occur at hockey or football games.
This is talking about fans now instead of the athletes... OUT.
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