Research shows that college Rugby and soccer players are more quickly

Question

Research shows that college Rugby and soccer players are more quickly moved to hostility and aggression than are college athletes in noncontact sports such as tennis. This conclusion that might indicate that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive has no basis. Soccer and Rugby players were probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than the tennis players.

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

A. The soccer and Rugby 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 tennis players.

B. The soccer and Rugby players, but not the tennis players, were aware at the start of the experiment that they were being tested for aggressiveness.

C. The same psychological research indicated that the soccer and Rugby players had a great respect for cooperation and team play, whereas the tennis players were most concerned with excelling as individual competitors.

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

E. Throughout the United States, more incidents of fan violence occur at baseball games than occur at Rugby or soccer games.

Antreev · Answer

B and C are just out of context, D and E weaken the conclusion thus option A is the answer.

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balaji4799 · Answer

Choose A only through POE, Now that I think deeply, soccer and rugby players turn aggressive and stay aggressive seems to agree with the statement which says soccer and rugby players were probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than the tennis players.

avikroy · Answer

Can Someone explain the ramifications of option B?? Thanks in advance

Pankaj0901 · Answer

My interpretation: The conclusion states that the students who opt for Rugby & Soccer are inherently more aggressive than those who opt for tennis. 
From the line: "Soccer and Rugby players were probably more hostile and aggressive  to start with  than the tennis players."

Option A states: The soccer and Rugby 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 tennis players.

It is contradicting/weakening the conclusion by stating that students become aggressive (during the sesion) after then opt in to these sports. How can Option A be strengthener?

AndrewN  - Request your advise. I seem to be missing something. Thanks

AndrewN · Answer

Hello, Pankaj0901 . Pardon the delay in my response. I have been playing catchup all day on requests and PMs, and I thought this question deserved a full analysis, especially because of the fairly even distribution of incorrect responses. I have prepared a screenshot for discussion. Screen Shot 2022-03-31 at 12.50.34.png I have highlighted the conclusion in blue, its premise in pink. At a base level, the conclusion is simply that some other conclusion has no basis . The rationale is that, in terms of aggression, soccer and rugby players are probably more hostile and aggressive to start with than tennis players. I suspect that the crucial second line of the passage has been mistyped: the conclusion that might indicate ? To support the conclusion of the question stem, though, we want to touch on the idea that soccer and rugby players, whom we can label Group A, may, in fact, be inherently more aggressive than tennis players, Group B, or perhaps that contact sports do not encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive. (There may be more than one way to strengthen or weaken a given argument or conclusion.) How about we leave answer choice (A) alone for a moment while we disprove the others? Answer choice (B) fails because participant awareness of the experimental design cannot be translated into participants who were aware that they were being tested for aggressiveness decided to be more aggressive . That is too big of a logical leap to take, not to mention that, unless you want to believe that a player knowing about the experimental design would somehow summon forth an innate aggression, such a consideration would seem to work against the conclusion we want to support—i.e. if players became more aggressive after learning about the experiment, then perhaps they were not so aggressive to start with . Answer choice (C) fails because cooperation , team play , and individual success have no direct connection to hostility and aggression. It is possible to be cooperative in a sport yet still be aggressive, but cooperation could just as well reduce feelings of hostility or aggression. There is nothing to lean on without making a few assumptions, and even one step removed is probably too many for a correct answer. Answer choice (D) fails because the experimental design is irrelevant. Only the findings are at issue, and the conclusion has been lost in the mix here. Answer choice (E) fails because fans are not the same as players, and the conclusion and research on which that conclusion is based are centered on players . Okay, so we know we have four incorrect answers, meaning that we have to look at answer choice (A). I started my underlining at the word more because the language here really matters, and that very word proves crucial. There is a difference between saying that Group A became more hostile and aggressive and that Group A became hostile and aggressive . The former indicates that hostility and aggression were already present, while the latter that some trigger, in this case soccer and rugby , brought out hostility and aggression. The answer goes on to say that Group A remained so during the offseason . There are two ways we can reasonably interpret remained so . First, we can keep the more : the players remained more hostile and aggressive during the offseason . Although, with this interpretation, you might argue that the sports produced some lingering effect in Group A, it is hard to justify the competing conclusion that contact sports encourage and teach participants to be hostile and aggressive . Specifically, teach and to be suggest that hostility and aggression were not present to begin with, but that would fly in the face of the more I discussed above. The second interpretation of remained so simply drops the more : the players remained hostile and aggressive during the offseason . Once again, though, we have to look back to more to make sense of the effect that playing soccer and rugby had on its players. We cannot escape the same line of reasoning we pursued earlier. Finally, since there was no increase in aggressiveness among the tennis players , we might, with an eye on the earlier half of the answer choice, make the case that these tennis players were not aggressive people , unlike the soccer and rugby players. In my view, more makes all the difference, and no other answer choice can reasonably be defended. It is not as though I saw (A) and shouted, Eureka! —you can see that I mulled things over for nearly two and a half minutes—but (A) touched on the right notes in a way that no other answer choice did, and when I went in for a closer inspection, it looked even stronger than before. Perhaps the question makes more sense now. Thank you for thinking to ask, and good luck with your studies. - Andrew

VerbalBot · Answer

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Research shows that college Rugby and soccer players are more quickly

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