Two groups of students, one from Country X and one from Country Y, ..

Question

Two groups of students, one from Country X and one from Country Y, were shown videotapes of criminal trials. When surveyed about sentences for those defendants who were found guilty, the opinions of the students from Country X were not correlated with whether the crimes were premeditated. The responses of the students from Country Y, however, varied depending on the degree of premeditation. People from Country X, then, do not regard intentions as a relevant part of sentencing to the same extent as people from Country Y.

Which of the following, if true, would be most damaging to the above conclusion?

A) The criminal trials were conducted in the language of Country Y, making it difficult for the students from Country X to distinguish the intentions of the accused.
 B) The nature of the crime was clearly stated in each trial.
 C) Almost half of the crimes were not premeditated.
 D) Another study has shown that the general population of Country Y regards premeditation as an important element of criminal sentencing.
 E) The students from Country X assigned punishments that varied depending on the severity of the crime committed.

yash312 · Answer

IMO A

Conclusion:People from Country X, then, do not regard intentions as a relevant part of sentencing to the same extent as people from Country Y.

Prethink: if some other factor, apart from intentions was responsible for sentencing difference betweeen x and y

A) The criminal trials were conducted in the language of Country Y, making it difficult for the students from Country X to distinguish the intentions of the accused.---COrrect, it states that people of X were not able to understand the reason of crime intentions, hence as the students cant understand the reason than how can we say they regard or do not regard intentions
B) The nature of the crime was clearly stated in each trial.---Incorrect, does not affects conclusion
C) Almost half of the crimes were not premeditated.---Incorrect, 50% crimes were still meditated and hence does not provide valid reason for difference
D) Another study has shown that the general population of Country Y regards premeditation as an important element of criminal sentencing.---Incorrect, Incorrect
E) The students from Country X assigned punishments that varied depending on the severity of the crime committed. ---Incorrect

rish2708 · Answer

+1

Posted from my mobile device

Arro44 · Answer

I agree with answer choice A being the correct one.

AC A is the only answer that would actually weaken the conclusion, whereas the other choices are either irrelevant (B, C, E) or would even strengthen the conclusion (D).

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Chris

AkshdeepS · Answer

Which of the following, if true, would be most damaging to the above conclusion?

First thing to understand here is that conclusion  ("People from Country X, then, do not regard intentions as a relevant part of sentencing to the same

extent as people from Country Y")  includes people of both countries. Therefore, any statement that tells us about the acts/reactions of only one country X or Y will most

propably be wrong. This is because we don't know under same situation what the people of other country would have done. Let us go to the answer choices :

A) The criminal trials were conducted in the language of Country Y, making it difficult for the students from Country X to distinguish the intentions of the accused.

If the people of Country X could not understand intentions of the accused because of language difference, then author can not conclude about the mindset of Country X's people. This will certainly weak the conclusion.   Seems correct.

B) The nature of the crime was clearly stated in each trial.

We are not concerened about the nature of the crime. We are only concerened with the fact that whether the crime was premeditated or not.   WRONG

C) Almost half of the crimes were not premeditated.  Irrelevant information

D) Another study has shown that the general population of Country Y regards premeditation as an important element of criminal sentencing.  What about another study/survey of people of Country X. Perhaps we find a similarity of the same survey is conducted on them. We can't say anything .  WRONG

E) The students from Country X assigned punishments that varied depending on the severity of the crime committed.  Same as D. We don't have any info about people of Country Y and what type of punishments they were assigned to.
   WRONG

VerbalBot · Answer

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Two groups of students, one from Country X and one from Country Y, ..

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