Bunuel wrote:
People with high blood pressure are generally more nervous and anxious than people who do not have high blood pressure. This fact show that this particular combination of personality traits—the so-called hypertensive personality—is likely to cause a person with these traits to develop high blood pressure.
The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument
A. fails to define the term “hypertensive personality”
B. presupposes that people have permanent personality traits
C. simply restates the claim that there is a “hypertensive personality” without providing evidence to support that claim.
D. takes a correlation between personality traits and high blood pressure as proof that the traits cause high blood pressure.
E. focuses on nervousness and anxiety only, ignoring other personality traits that people with high blood pressure might have
OFFICIAL EXPLANATION
Premise: People with high blood pressure are generally more nervous and anxious than people who do not have high blood pressure.
Premise: This particular combination of personality traits is called the hypertensive personality.
Conclusion: The hypertensive personality is likely to cause a person to develop high blood pressure. The premises indicate that certain individuals have both high blood pressure and the hypertensive personality. From this information we cannot draw any conclusions, but the author makes the classic GMAT error of concluding that one of the conditions causes the other. Your job is to find the answer that describes this error of reasoning. From the “Situations That Can Lead to Errors of Causality” discussion, the scenario in this stimulus falls under item 2—“Two (or more) events occur at the same time.” As described in that section, “While one event could have caused the other, the two events could be the result of a third event, or the two events could simply be correlated but one does not cause the other.” Thus, you should search either for an answer that states that the author forgot that a third event could have caused the two events or that the author mistook correlation for causation. Answer choice (D) describes the latter.
Answer choice (A): This is an Opposite answer because the stimulus defines the hypertensive personality as one with the traits of nervousness and anxiety.
Answer choice (B): The permanence of the traits is not an issue in the stimulus.
Answer choice (C): Although the argument does act as described in this answer choice, this is not an error. On the GMAT, authors have the right to make premises that contain certain claims. Remember, the focus is not on the premises but where the author goes with the argument once a premise is created.
Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer. The conclusion can be diagrammed as: HP = hypertensive personality, HBP = high-blood pressure, HPHBP. This answer choice describes a classic error of causality: two events occurring simultaneously are mistakenly interpreted to be in a causal relationship. There are many other possibilities for the arrangement: the two events could be caused by a third event (for example, genetics could cause both a hypertensive personality and high blood pressure), the events could be reversed (the high blood pressure could actually cause the hypertensive personality), or there may be situations where the two do not occur together.
Answer choice (E): Although the argument does act as described in this answer choice, this is not an error. The author is allowed to focus on nervousness and anxiety to the exclusion of other traits. To analogize, imagine a speaker says, “The Kansas City Royals have bad pitching and this makes them a bad team.” The Kansas City Royals might also wear blue, but the speaker is not obligated to mention that trait when discussing why the Royals are a bad baseball team. In much the same way, the author of this stimulus is not obligated to mention other traits people with high blood-pressure may have.