Self-study
If retail stores experience a decrease in revenues during this holiday season, then either attitudes toward extravagant gift-giving have changed or prices have risen beyond the level most people can afford. ██ █████████ ████ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ████ █████████ ██ █████████ ████ ███████ ██ ██████ ████ █████ ██████ ███ █████ ████ ██████ ███ ███████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ████████ ████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ██████ ██████ ██████ ███ ████ █████
Structure: Conditional Rules
The stimulus gives us three conditional statements. First, we're told that if retail stores experience a drop in revenues this holiday season, this means either that people's attitudes toward "extravagant gift-giving" have changed or that prices of gifts have risen too high for most people:
revenue drop → attitude change OR prices too high
We're then told that if people's attitudes have changed, then "we all have something to celebrate this season":
attitude change → something to celebrate
On the other hand, if prices are too high for most people, then salaries must not have kept pace with rising prices this year:
prices too high → /salaries keep pace with prices
Analysis: Potential inferences
The question stem gives us a piece of information to plug into the conditional rules above: salaries have kept pace with prices over the last year. This effectively triggers the contrapositive of the rule in the third sentence. Because we know salaries have kept pace with prices, we know that gift prices are not too high for most people:
salaries keep pace with prices → /prices too high
Since we know that gift prices are not too high, then we know that if an answer choice tells us that retail stores have experienced a drop in revenues, it must be because attitudes have changed, since that's our only other option. In this case, we would know that "we all have something to celebrate this season":
revenue drop → attitude change → something to celebrate
A final inference could come from the contrapositive of the first rule:
/attitude change AND /prices too high → /revenue drop
Since we know that gift prices are not too high this year, if one of the answer choices tells us that attitudes have not changed, we'll be able to infer that stores will not see a drop in revenues this holiday season. Notice that both this inference and the one above it rely on an additional piece of information: that retail stores experience a drop in revenues, or that attitudes have definitely not changed. The only inference we can make from the fact in the question stem on its own is that gift prices have not risen beyond the level most people can afford.
13.
Assume the premises above to ██ █████ ██ ████████ ████ ████ ████ ████ ██████ ██████ ██████ ███ ████ █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ██ █████
a
Attitudes toward extravagant ███████████ ████ ████████
Incorrect. Remember that the only inference we can make just from the fact in the question stem is that prices of gifts haven't risen beyond most people's reach. To be able to infer that people's attitudes have changed, we would also need to know that retail stores have seen a drop in revenue. We're never told this is the case.
Remember that the stimulus marks the condition about a revenue decrease with an "if": "if retail stores experience a decrease in revenues during this holiday season..." Assuming that the premises are true means assuming that the conditional rule is true, not that the specific condition about a decline in revenues has been triggered — i.e., we can't assume that stores have definitely experienced a decrease in revenues. So we can't validly infer (A) without additional information.
b
Retail stores will ███ ██████████ █ ████████ ██ ██████ █████ ██████ ████ ███████ ███████
Incorrect. Again, the only inference we can make from the fact in the question stem is that prices of gifts haven't risen beyond most people's reach. To be able to infer that retail stores won't see a decrease in revenue, we would also have to know that people's attitudes toward extravagant gift-giving haven't changed, which we're not told is the case.
c
Prices in retail ██████ ████ ███ █████ ██████ ███ █████ ████ ████ ██████ ███ ██████ ██████ ████ ███████ ███████
Correct. By the contrapositive of the last sentence, we know that if salaries have kept pace with rising prices in the past year, then it must not be the case that gift prices have risen beyond the level most people can afford:
salaries keep pace with prices → /prices too high
So (C) is a valid inference.
d
Attitudes toward extravagant ███████████ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ██████████ █ ████████ ██ ████████ ██████ ████ ███████ ███████
Incorrect. Again, by the fact we're given in the question stem, we can only conclude that gifts are not too expensive for most people. Without additional information, we can't make any inferences about people's attitudes or whether stores will see a drop in revenue.
e
Either attitudes toward ███████████ ███████████ ████ ███████ ██ ██████ ████ █████ ██████ ███ █████ ████ ████ ██████ ███ ██████ ██████ ████ ███████ ███████
Incorrect. If salaries have kept pace with rising prices, then we know for sure that it's not possible for prices to have risen beyond the level most people can afford:
salaries keep pace with prices → /prices too high
Because (E) holds out that possibility as an option, we know (E) is not a valid inference.