Q16 - When a threat to life

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (most supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:

If it's a normal threat, only unusual instances tend to show up in the news media.
If it's a rare threat, it always gets reported in featured news media stories.
People tend to estimate the risk of a threat based on how frequently those threats come to their attention.

Answer Anticipation:
Can we synthesize any of these ideas? Yes, the first two sentences reveal to us as that rare threats are DISPROPROTIONATELY overrepresented in the news media. So the last sentence tempts us to say that people who watch news media will, at least to some extent, end up with a skewed estimate of the risk of various threats (they'll think common ones are less likely than rare ones).

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Extreme: "primarily". Out of scope "governmental action".

(B) Out of scope: "particularly dreadful" / "no control"

(C) This looks good, similar to our prephrased synthesis. "tend to" is strong, but the last sentence gives us "tend to". "Primarily" is strong, but this isn't saying that "people primarily get their info from news media". It's saying "IF you're somebody who primarily gets info from news media ...".

(D) Out of scope: "long range" vs. "short range" threats

(E) New comparison: "MORE is spent". Out of scope: "resources spent on [threats]"

Takeaway/Pattern: Inference questions test our ability to integrate claims together, usually using conditional, causal, quantitative, or comparative logic. Here, we had quantitative ideas in the first two sentences and causal wording in the last sentence. Combining those gave us the idea that people would OVERrate the risk of a rare threat, based on it being a popular news item, and UNDERrate the risk of a common threat, based on it being featured on the news only if it's particularly unusual.

#officialexplanation

[kgd91589]

I narrowed down my answer choices to C and D, but I went with D. Can someone please provide further explanation??

Thanks in advance.

[farhadshekib]

(C) is supported by sentence 1, 2 and 3.

Sentence: If something is a common threat, then only unusual instances are prominently reported by the news media

Sentence 2 states: rare threat (or uncommon threats) are universally reported in featured stories.

Sentence 3 states: People in general tend to estimate the risk of various threats by how often those threats come to their attention.

(C) suggests that those who get their info primarily from the news media tend to overestimate the risk of uncommon, or rare, threats relative to the risk of common threats.

Well, if people primarily get their info from the news media, then they are often exposed to stories about rare threats (2).

Moreover, they are probably not as exposed to stories about common threats because only unusual instances of common threats tend to be prominently reported by the news media (1).

We also know that people tend to estimate the risk of threats by how often such threats come to their attention. With respect to those who primarily get their info from the news media, one can assume it would be something like this: risk of rare threats > risk of common threats.

As for (D), "long rate" and "immediate past/future" is not mentioned in the stim.