Logical reasoning PrepTest 117 · Section 4 · Question 9

Question prompt

Manager: When Sullivan was Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Errors in Reasoning Questions

Stimulus Summary

“People”: Sullivan being older than others up for the job is why he didn’t get the promotion
Manager: Older people were promoted into other jobs, so age wasn’t the “deciding factor.”

Answer Anticipation

The opposing point cites one factor as the reason that Sullivan didn’t get the promotion - he was “older than the competition.”
In order to rebut this, the Manager brings up what she considers to be counterexamples - people older than Sullivan who were promoted. If people older than Sullivan were promoted, then Sullivan being older can’t be the reason he was passed over.
However, that’s a shift in the comparison. The opposing point compares Sullivan to the other people up for promotion. The “counterexample” raised by the Manager brings up people for other promotions that were older than Sullivan. In order to serve as a counterexample here, however, those individuals would need to be older than the competition for their promotions, not older than Sullivan.
This shift in the groups being compared is a flaw in the argument, so the correct answer should bring it up. Since the question stem is phrased as asking for an answer that the argument “fails to consider,” we can get even more specific - the argument fails to consider that people older than Sullivan who were promoted were younger than the others up for promotion (or at least weren’t older).

Answer choices

  1. A
    Sullivan was well qualified Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    The Manager’s argument rules out one possible reason that Sullivan wasn’t promoted, but she doesn’t settle on an alternative. She could believe it’s because he wasn’t qualified, or because there was some other issue with his performance or personality!
  2. B
    age is only one Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The Manager concludes that age wasn’t the “deciding” factor in the promotion decision, so she could believe that it was one of many factors, just not a major one.
  3. C
    people often associate age Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    If anything, this suggests that older people would be promoted, so it doesn’t line up with the facts of this case.
  4. D
    the people older than Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem
    This answer matches our anticipation and gets at the shifting comparison. If those others who were promoted were the youngest in the list of people being considered for their promotions, then that aligns with age being a factor in promotion decisions, suggesting that it could have been the reason Sullivan wasn’t promoted, undermining the Manager’s argument.
  5. E
    Sullivan's employer tries to Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    While this answer might speak to the actual reason for the decision getting out and circulated around, it doesn’t speak to what the reason was for Sullivan not getting the promotion, so this answer is out of scope.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 6%
  2. B 11%
  3. C 1%
  4. D Credited 81%
  5. E 0%

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