SAT #9 Reading (Question 17)

Question

The author quoted in lines 58-60 expresses which view of the study's results?

Answer 1

Answer Choice C is the correct answer, because the author quoted believes that people “have just a tiny glimmer of insight into how they are uniquely viewed by particular other people,” and Answer Choice C states that, “an individual hardly knows what another individual thinks of him or her.” Answer Choice B is wrong because the quote doesn’t address individuals’ perceptions of how they are regarded by groups and because the text says that individuals do generally know how they’re regarded by groups of people. Answer Choice D is wrong because it’s too strong of an answer choice, and because the quote does tell us that individuals have at least “a tiny glimmer of insight,” and so can do better than a random guess. Answer Choice A might seem plausible, but the quote doesn’t give us enough support for the claim that there is a “promising chance” of predicting how others perceive them.

How to solve this? The Questions asks for the view which the quote in Lines 58-60 addresses. The quote tell us that, “People seem to have just a tiny glimmer of insight into how they are uniquely viewed by particular other people.” So, the author agrees with the study’s results and believes that individuals aren’t good at predicting the opinion other individuals have of them, even if they can predict the opinion of a group. Once we go through the answer choices, we should be able to eliminate Answer Choices B and D, because of the reasons given earlier (Choice B concerns groups and not individuals, while D makes too strong of a claim given that the quote tells us we have “just a tiny glimmer of insight”).

The real choice then, comes between Answer Choice A and Answer Choice C, and the decision is a tough one. Both express people’s limited ability to understand how others perceive them (“a small chance” and “hardly knows”), without making too strong of a claim. The central difference between them is that Answer Choice A says there is a “promising chance” of correctly predicting how one is perceived. This “promising chance” might seem to match the “tiny glimmer of insight” mentioned in the quote, but we have to decide whether that’s sufficient evidence for the claim. [Using the burden of proof rule, and the adornment rule], we should say that all things being equal, the simpler answer choice is better and default to Answer Choice C.