Self-study
Advertising agencies are often wrongly criticized for causing people to desire, and thus purchase, products they do not really need. ██████ ████████ ███ ████ ████ ███ ██████ ███████ ████ ███████ ███ ███████ ████ ███████ █████ ███████████ ██████ █████ ███████████ ██ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████ ████████ ██ ███████ ██ ██ █████ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ████ ██████ ███████ ████████ ████ ███████ ████████
Objective: Fill In The Blank Questions
This is a Fill In The Blank question, which you can determine by noticing the big old blank space at the end of the stimulus. Fill In The Blank questions present a partial argument in the stimulus, then ask us to round the argument out by adding in the missing piece.
But from the question stem alone, we can’t tell whether the missing piece is a conclusion or a premise. Our first step, then, is to look for indicator words preceding the blank. If we find a therefore, for example, we’re in a Main Conclusion / Most Strongly Supported question; if we find a word like since, we’re in a Strengthen question.
Here, the phrase “It is clear then” tells us we need to provide the argument’s conclusion. To put it more precisely, we’re given a very specific (and quite grammatically complex) subject – desires that people believe products will satisfy – and tasked with supplying a predicate that is supported by the other claims in the stimulus.
Argument Summary: It's A Doozy
This stimulus is very difficult to parse. Rather than walking you through the realistic process of arriving at the correct mental model, which likely involves a fair bit of backtracking and maybe even some notetaking, we’ll just present the structure as clearly as possible right off the bat.
According to our author, there is a
WRONG
Ad Agency: Psst you should start desiring a sports car.
Person: Hey I think I desire a sports car!
– Person buys a sports car –
RIGHT
Person: I desire to feel cool.
Ad Agency: Psst a sports car would make you feel cool.
Person: Hey I think a sports car would make me feel cool!
– Person buys a sports car –
In the wrong account, ad agencies cause people to desire products. In the right account, ad agencies cause people to match products up with their pre-existing desires.
As mentioned above, our fill-in-the-blank challenge is to provide a predicate that applies to the subject the desires that people believe products will satisfy. Which like... what?
Well, in the “right” account, the Person has a desire to feel cool, and believes a sports car will satisfy that desire. So the desire to feel cool is the one we’re talking about. You know, the (spoiler alert) pre-existing desire the Ad Agency preys upon to sell sports cars.
Navigating all that logic up front and arriving at such a specific anticipation is theoretically possible but not very realistic. On test day it’s certainly worth backtracking and rereading until you have your head wrapped around the argument’s broad structure, but practically speaking the process of finding the correct answer is aided significantly by the answer choices themselves, many of which just say clearly unsupported stuff. So let's proceed with process of elimination.
24.
Which one of the following ████ █████████ █████████ ███ █████████
a
can be classified ██ █████ ██ ████ ████████ ██████ ██████ ██ ████ █ ████████
The notion that people don’t really need the products they buy does appear in the “wrong” account, but our author doesn’t directly challenge that idea. (A) wants the stimulus to argue that people really do need the things they buy, but that just doesn’t happen.
b
are created by ██████ ███ ███ ██ █████ ███████████ ██████
(B) says desires are created by falsehoods, and desires are not created by truths. Admittedly, the stimulus is suspiciously silent on the question of whether these beliefs ad agencies incept into people’s minds are true or false, but silence is very different from the outright claim (B) makes.
More broadly, the right answer doesn’t just need to be supported, it also needs to fit inside the blank, i.e., be the author’s main point. Our author certainly is not on team “advertisers are a bunch of liars.”
c
will rarely be █████████ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ██████
Like (B), (C) trades on the stimulus’ suspicious silence on the question of whether the beliefs ad agencies incept into people’s minds are true or false. Will buying that sports car really make you feel cool? Maybe you’re skeptical.
But that skepticism isn’t enough to justify (C)'s claim that these desires will rarely be satisfied, and it’s certainly not enough to put those words in the author’s mouth.
d
are exploited rather ████ ███████ ██ ███████████
This accurately describes the core difference between the “wrong” and “right” accounts as presented by the author. People wrongly think advertisers cause people to desire products that they didn’t used to want, when really advertisers take pre-existing desires and aim them at specific products.
e
are generally what ██████ ██████ ██ ███████ ██████ ████ ██ ███████████
The stimulus establishes that advertisers induce people to believe products will fulfill desires.
(E) mirrors this structure by claiming that desires induce people to believe advertisers are telling the truth about products.
In both worlds there’s a lot of believing and inducing and desires and advertisers and products going around. Hence the temptation, especially if you’re rolling into (E) in a state of deep confusion because of the complicated stimulus.
But even if you start off confused, you should be able to match each concept in (E) to its counterpart in the stimulus and work out that they’re all scrambled around.