Self-study
Conclusion A law is successful primarily because the behavior it prescribes has attained the status of custom. ████ ██ ███████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ██ █████████ ████████ ██ ████ ███ ████████ ███████ ███████████ ████████ ████████ ███████ ████████████ ██ ████████ ████ ███ ██████ ███ ███████ ███ ████████ ██ █████████ ████████ ██ ███████ █████████ █████ █████ ███ ███ ██████████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ █████████ █████ ██ ████████████
WTF Kind Of Question Is This?
Here’s the distilled prompt:
According to the author, what do laws and manners have in common?
How do you get there? Well for starters, when a question stem doesn’t fit cleanly into any of the categories you’ve come to recognize, it’s especially important to read it closely to make sure you’re clear on its exact meaning. This stem tells us:
- The stimulus will make a comparison between two things.
- Our job is to capture the precise nature of that comparison.
So this is kinda like an MSS question in that the correct answer must be supported by the stimulus – it can’t introduce new concepts or say anything inaccurate.
With such a specific task, it might even be worthwhile (though certainly not necessary) to peek down at the answer choices first to see how they differ from one another. In this instance, all our answers come in the form of “As with manners, laws are [like this],” which narrows our focus to the distilled prompt at the top of this section.
The Analogy
Once you’ve read the stem thoughtfully, the stimulus boils down to this:
Manners are [this way ] and laws are also [this way ].
I’ve helped a bit with the highlighting – grammatically, those highlighted clauses are the ones we need to compare. All that’s left is to paraphrase them both in a way that emphasizes what they have in common. Here it is:
Anticipation: We abide by [manners / laws] not because of penalties, but because cultural customs make deviance unthinkable.
25.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ ████████ ██ ███ █████████
a
As with manners ███ █████ ████████ ████ ████ ████ ███████ ██ ████████
(A) is wrong for MSS-style reasons: the author doesn’t mention the concept of variance in different societies.
b
As with manners, ███ ███████ █████ ███ █ ███████ ██ ████████ ████ ████████ █ ███ ██ ███████
(B) is wrong because it frames the author’s point as normative (about what societies should do) instead of descriptive (about what societies do in fact).
The “custom” piece is pretty close, so the temptation is understandable.
c
As with manners, ███ ████ ██████ ██████████ ███ ██████████ ████ ████ ██ ███████
This distills the common elements between manners and laws in the stimulus. Kinda like a double-MSS, (C) captures both the author’s description of manners and the author’s description of laws without venturing into unsupported territory or overstrong statements.
d
As with manners, ████ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ████████ ████ ██ █████████ █████████
If you take a moment to actually track (D)’s precise meaning, the mismatch is pretty clear. Here’s a more plain-English translation of (D):
For both manners and laws: most of them don’t [prohibit] behavior that [you must do if you want to stay morally good].
So (D) is wrong for MSS-style reasons: it’s a very specific claim that simply doesn’t appear in the stimulus.
e
As with manners, ████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ██████ █████████ ████████ █████ ███ ██████████ █████
(E) is wrong for MSS-style reasons – it says inaccurate stuff. Penalties and sanctions are mentioned for both manners and laws, but the author isn’t saying they don’t exist – they explicitly do exist. The author is just saying they aren’t the main reason people follow [manners / laws].