The belief, in some cultures, about the black cat

I see no one has taken a crack at explaining this one yet, so I will give it a go. The question took me 1:01. I will take the opportunity to outline exactly how I approach SC questions in hopes that someone from the community may find such a method worth considering.


Yes, that is right: I cut off the sentence. That is because as soon as I know something is wrong with the original sentence, I break off from it and look for either similarities (so I know what else to eliminate without further consideration) or differences (so that I hang on to better choices for the time being). This sentence is incorrect because it employs an unidiomatic about... as being. It is not as if I eliminated it on the grounds that belief... about is necessarily wrong, even if it seems casual and I prefer belief... that, or that I tossed the sentence because of about... as, or even because of the appearance of the word being, although that did put my doubt meter a little higher. No, it is the entirety of about... as being that is clearly incorrect. I can think of no sentence that would correctly put belief about [something] as being together like this. (A) is gone. And while we are at it, we can axe (D) as well.



What do the other answer choices do to address this deficiency?


This answer opts for a possessive ahead of the subject and preserves the earlier belief... about... as, but it ditches the being. If you were unsure about the construct, you could hang on to it, which is to say that you should not get rid of an option you cannot definitely argue against, but as we are about to see, there are better alternatives.


Now we have a clear and direct sentence, and the idiom belief that is unassailable. Furthermore, that [something] is is also difficult to find fault with. This option is much better than the questionable (B), so I would ditch the earlier answer and ping back and forth between this one and (E). Almost there.


I will be honest and say that I did not get past this being before I cut this answer loose and settled on (C). However, I would also like to point out that the placement of the phrase in some cultures creates a meaning that differs from that of all the rest of the sentences. Whereas those sentences convey that some, but not all, cultures believe something, this answer indicates that the phenomenon is a relatively recent development in some, but not all, cultures.

Nothing beats the feeling of certainty you can experience with many SC questions. On this one, I wanted to be conservative, but in the end, (C) stood out head and shoulders above the rest.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew