Logical reasoning PrepTest 157 · Section 2 · Question 1

This doesn't match the inference we anticipated ("celebrities and widely respected people should not publicly refrain from voting"), so we can eliminate it without a second thought. Moreover, the "if-then" statement in the passage can't support an inference about what societies should require of their citizens. We can only make conclusions about the "then" part of an "if-then" statement, and the "then" condition of the passage's "if-then" tells us what individuals should not do.

If we translated this claim to a simpler "if-then" statement, we'd get, "If one should vote, then one must expect that voting will cause many other people to vote." We could also translate it to its flipside, "If one does not expect that voting will cause other people to vote, then one need not vote." These don't match the inference we anticipated ("celebrities and widely respected people should not publicly refrain from voting"), so we can eliminate (B) without much debate.

Besides, the passage will not allow us to infer this "if-then" statement. When a set of facts contains one "if-then" premise and a series of factual premises, we can't use those premises to infer another "if-then" premise. We can only apply the factual premises to the "if-then" premise and draw a factual conclusion.

This doesn't match the inference we anticipated ("celebrities and widely respected people should not publicly refrain from voting"), so we can eliminate it without a second thought. Moreover, the "if-then" statement in the passage can't support an inference about whether people should be respected. We can only make conclusions about the "then" part of an "if-then" statement, and the "then" condition of the passage's "if-then" tells us what individuals should not do — not which individuals should not be respected.

This doesn't match the inference we anticipated ("celebrities and widely respected people should not publicly refrain from voting"), so we can eliminate it without further debate. Moreover, these facts can't support a broad conclusion about whether people should emulate "celebrities who are not widely respected." The passage doesn't provide any specific information about unrespected celebrities that would allow us to conclude that people should never emulate such celebrities' actions. If we knew that every action performed by unrespected celebrities harms society, we could draw this conclusion. But the passage doesn't provide that info.

This matches the inference we anticipated ("celebrities and widely respected people should not publicly refrain from voting"), so we confidently select it. The passage tells us that widely respected people publicly refraining from voting would harm society, as many people would emulate their actions, and society would be harmed by many people not voting. The "if-then" statement in the passage tells us that one shouldn't do something that would harm society. So, widely respected people should not publicly refrain from voting, as this answer choice states.