Bunuel wrote:
12 Days of Christmas GMAT Competition with Lots of FunIn a certain experiment, participants were placed into one of two groups: Interviewers or Respondents. Each Interviewer was given a standard list of questions to address to one Respondent, while observing the body language of that Respondent. Respondents were privately told either to lie in every response or to tell the truth in every response. Although each Interviewer reported that such indicators as shifting posture, level of eye contact, and hesitation before speaking allowed them to confidently predict who was or was not lying, the overall accuracy of the Interviewer’s predictions was little better than random guessing. The researchers concluded that body language is not an accurate gauge of perceived truthfulness in everyday conversation.
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the researchers’ conclusion?
(A) Many people become more attentive to others’ body language when specifically instructed to observe it.
(B) People who are intentionally lying often maintain continuous eye contact with the person to whom they are speaking.
(C) In everyday conversation, practically no one always lies or always tells the truth.
(D) None of the participants in the experiment were acquainted with each other before commencement of the experiment.
(E) The questions used in the experiment were innocuous questions with no relevance to an individual’s personal beliefs.
Manhattan Prep Official ExplanationStep 1: Identify the Question The word
weaken in the question stem indicates that this is a Weaken question.
Step 2: Deconstruct the Argument In this argument, the conclusion is stated at the end of the paragraph:
Body language is not an accurate gauge of perceived truthfulness in everyday conversation. Although the Interviewers claimed to be able to predict which Respondents were lying based on their body language, their predictions were
little better than random guessing—that is, not accurate.
Step 3: Pause and State the Goal What assumptions are the researchers making? The researchers conducted this experiment in a way that introduces at least two concerns. First, there is no stated attempt to create a control group in the experiment. A better version of the experiment could have included a group of Interviewers and Respondents who were given no special directions on how to reply to the questions. Second, the researchers draw a conclusion about
everyday life from one experiment conducted with conditions that differ substantially from real-life situations.
Another possible concern may be the participants themselves. There is no mention of whether the Interviewers have received even cursory instructions of
how body language might indicate whether a person is lying. What if body language is a reliable indicator of lying, but only when evaluated by a trained eye?
Step 4: Work From Wrong to Right(A) This answer choice suggests that the Interviewers may have been more attuned to the body language of the Respondents. However, if anything, this answer choice would suggest that the Interviewers’ predictions should have been more accurate. Since the predictions were not accurate, despite expectations, this answer choice actually strengthens the argument.
(B) People who are lying maintain continuous eye contact; what about people who are telling the truth? Even if one assumes that liars intentionally maintain eye contact and truth-tellers do not, that interpretation would strengthen the argument by reinforcing the expectation that body language would be an effective tool to determine whether a person was lying.
(C) CORRECT. This answer choice may seem irrelevant. Of course people in real life do not normally speak the truth or lie 100% of the time! But if people do not adhere to the strict roles of the experiment in real life, then the results of this experiment cannot be convincingly extrapolated to real-life. In other words, the experiment was too artificial to serve as an everyday life substitute, so the author’s conclusion is weakened.
(D) If anything, this answer choice would strengthen the argument, because it removes one potential variable from the experiment. If some of the participants were previously acquainted before the experiment, then some of the participants might have non-body language related clues to tell when someone was lying or telling the truth.
(E) If anything, this choice would strengthen the argument, because it removes one potential variable from the experiment. For example, what if the questions touched on very personal beliefs held by participants? The emotional impact of the question itself might somehow distort a Respondent’s behavior and make body language a less useful clue to whether that Respondent was lying. This answer choice removes that possible concern and would actually increase the expectation that body language would be a reliable indicator of whether a person is lying. Since body language was not a reliable indicator in this experiment, the researchers’ conclusion would be more convincing.
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17 Dec 2022, 07:00
66%
(02:20)
wrong 
