section ⅲ
time-35 minutes
26 questions
directions: each passage in this section if followed by a group of questions to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage. for some questions, more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question, however, you are to choose the best answer; that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question, and blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.
the fairness of the judicial process depends on the objective presentation of facts to an impartial jury made up of one's peers. present the facts, and you have a fair trial
(5)however, fact-finding, especially for interpersonal disagreements, is not so straightforward and is often contaminated by variables that reach beyond the legal domain.
(10)a trial is an attempt to transport jurors to the time and place of the disputed event, to recreate the disputed event, or at least to explain that event with maximum accuracy. a trial falls short of this goal, however.
(15)because it presents selected witnesses who recite selected portions of their respective memories concerning selected observations of the disputed event. these multiple selections are referred to as the abstraction process.
(20)limitations in both perception and memory are responsible for the fact that the remembered event contains only a fraction of the detail present during the actual event, and the delay between observation and
(25)recitation causes witnesses' memories to lose even more of the original perceptions. during the course of a trial, a witness's recitation of the now-abstracted events may reflect selected disclosure based on his or her
(30)attitudes and motivations surrounding that testimony. furthermore, the incidents reported are dependent on the lines of inquiry established by the attorneys involved. accordingly, the recited data are a
(35)fraction of the remembered data, which are a fraction of the observed data, which are a fraction of the total data for the event. after the event that led to the trial has been abstracted by participants in the trial, jurors
(40)are expected to resolve factual issues. some of the jurors' conclusions are based on facts that were directly recited; others are found inferentially. here another abstraction process takes place. discussions during deliberations.
(45)add to the collective pool of recalled evidentiary perceptions; nonetheless, the jurors' abstraction processes further reduce the number of characteristics traceable to the number of characteristics traceable to the original event.
(50)complication can arise from false abstractions at each stage. studies have shown that witnesses recall having perceived incidents that are known to be absent from a given event. conversely, jurors can remember
(55)hearing evidence that is unaccounted for in court transcripts.explanations for these phenomena range from blas through prior conditioning or observer expectation to taully reportage of the event based on the event based on the
(60)constraints of alnguage. aberrant abstractions in perception or deliberate, but reliability is nevertheiess diluted. finally, deliberate untruthfulness has always
(65)been recognized as a risk of testimoniat evidence. such intentionally false inaccuracies produced by the abstraction process.
1. in this passage, the author's main purpose is to
(a) discuss a process that jeopardizes the famness of jury trials
(b) analyze a methodology that safeguards the individual's right to fair trial
(c) explain why jurors should view eyewiness testimony with skepticism
(d) defend the trial-by-jury process, despite its limitations
(e) point out the unavoidable abuses that have crept into the judicral process
2.the author considers all of the following obstacies to a fair trial exceft
(a) selective perceptions
(b) faulty communications
(c) partial disclosures
(d) intentional falsifications
(e) too few abstractions
3.the author would most likely agree that the abstraction process occurs in the judicial process primarily because
(a) some jurors' conclusions are based on facts rather than on inferences
(b) remembered events depend upon an undividual's emotions
(c) human beings are the sources and users of data presented in trials
(d) it is difficult to distinguish between deliberate faisenood and unintentional selected disclosure
(e) witnesses often dispute on eanother's recoliections of events
4.it can be inferred that the author believes the ability of juries to resolve factual issues is
(a) lmited by any individual juror's tendency to draw inferences from the facts presented during the trial
(b) overwhelmed by the collective pool of recalled evidentiary perceptions
(c) unaffected by the process of trying to reenact the event leading to the trial
(d) dependent upon the jury's ability to understand the influence of the abstraction process on testimony
(e) subject to the same limitations of perception and memory that affect witnesses
5.with which one of the following statements would the author most likely agree?
(a) if deliberate untruthfulness were all the courts had to contend with, jury trials would be fairer than they are today.
(b) lack of moral standards is more of an impediment to a fair trial than human frailty.
(c) the bulk of the inaccuracies produced by the abstraction process are innocently presented and rarely have any serious consequences.
(d) if the inaccuracies resulting from the abstraction process persist, the present trial-by-jury system is likely to become a thing of the past.
(e) once intentional falsification of evidence is eliminated from trials, ensuring an accurate presentation of facts will easily follow.
6.the author's attitude toward the abstraction process that occurs when witnesses testify in a trial can best be described as
(a) confident that witnesses can be conditioned to overcome many limitations of memory
(b) concerned that it may undermine witnesses ability to accurately describe the original event in dispute
(c) critical of witnesses' motivations when delivering testimony
(d) indifferent toward the effect the abstraction process has on testimony
(e) suspicious of witnesses' efforts to describe remembered events truthfully
7.given the information in the passage, the actual event that is disputed in a jury trial is most like
(a) a group of job applicants that is narrowed down to a few finalists
(b) a subject that is photographed from varjed and increasingly distant vantage points
(c) scraps of fabric that are sewn together to make an intricately designed quilt
(d) a puzzle that is unsystematically assembled through trial and error
(e) a lie that is compounded by additional lies in order to be maintained
a medical article once pointed with great alarm to an increase in cancer among milk drinkers. cancer, it seems, was becoming increasingly frequent in new england,
(5) minnesota, wisconsin, and switzerland, where a lot of milk is produced and consumed, while remaining rare in ceylon, where milk is scarce. for further evidence it was pointed out that cancer was less frequent in some
(10)states of the southern united states where less milk was consumed. also, it was pointed out, milk-drinking english women get some kinds of cancer eighteen times as frequently as japanese women who seldom drink milk
(15)a little digging might uncover quite a number of ways to account for these figures but one factor is enough by itself to show them up. cancer is predominantly a disease that strikes in middle life or after. switzerland
(20)and the states of the united states mentioned first are alike in having populations with relatively long spans of life. english women at the time the study was made were living an average of twelve years longer than
(25)japanese women.professor helen m. walker has worked out an amusing illustration of the folly in assuming there must be cause and effect whenever two things vary together. in investigating the
(30)relationship between age and some physical characteristics of women, begin by measuring the angle of the feet in walking. you will find that the angle tends to be greater among older women. you might first consider whether
(35)this indicates that women grow older because they toe out, and you can see immediately that this is ridiculous. so it appears that age increases the angle between the feet, and most women must come to toe out more
(40)as they grow older.
any such conclusion is probably false and certainly unwarranted. you could only reach it legitimately by studying the same women-or possibly equivalent groups-over a period of
(45)time. that would eliminate the factor responsible here, which is that the older women grew up at a time when a young lady was taught to toe out in walking, while the members of the younger group were
(50)learning posture in a day when that was discouraged.
when you find somebody-usually an interested party-making a fuss about a correlation, look first of all to see if it is not (55) one of this type, produced by the stream of events, the trend of the times. in our time it is easy to show a positive correlation between any pair of things like these: number of students in college, number of inmates
(60)in mental institutions, consumption of cigarettes, incidence of heart disease, use of x-ray machines, production of false teeth, salaries of california school teachers, profits of nevada gambling halls. to call some one
(65)of these the cause of some other is manifestly silly. but it is done every day.
8.the author's conclusion about the relationship between age and the ways women walk indicates he believes that
(a) toeing out is associated with aging
(b) toeing out is fashionable with the younger generation
(c) toeing out was fashionable for an older generation
(d) studying equivalent groups proves that toeing out increases with age
(e) studying the same women over a period of time proves that toeing out increases with age.
9.the author describes the posited relationship between toeing out and age (lines 29-40) in order to
(a) illustrate a folly
(b) show how social attitudes toward posture change
(c) explain the effects of aging
(d) illustrate a medical problem
(e) offer a method to determine a woman's age from her footprints.
10. given the author's statements in the passage, his advice for evaluating statistics that show a high positive correlation between two conditions could include all the following statements except
(a) look for an explanation in the stream of events
(b) consider some trend of the times as the possible cause of both conditions
(c) account for the correlations in some way other than causality
(d) determine which of the two conditions is the cause and which is the effect
(e) decide whether the conclusions have been readched legitimately and the appropriate groupings have been made.
11. assume that there is a high statistical correiation between college attendanceand individual earnings. given this, the author would most probably agree with which one of the following statements about the cause-effect relationship between college attendance and income?
(a) someone's potential earnings may be affected by other variables, like wealth or intelligence, that are also associated with college attendance.
(b) someone who attends graduate school will be rich.
(c) someone who attends graduate school will earn more money than someone who does not.
(d) someone who attends college will earn more money than someone who does not attend college.
(e) some who attends college will earn more money only because she does attend college.
12. according to the author professor walker beheves that
(a) women who toe out age more rapidly than women who do not
(b) most woment toe out as they grow older because age increases the angle between the feet.
(c) older women tend to walk with a greater angle between the feet
(d) toeing out is the reason why women grow old
(e) a causal relationship must exist whenever two things vary together
13. the author would reject all the following statements about cause-effect relationships as explanations for the statistics that show an increase in cancer rates except that the
(a) ceylongese drink more milk than the english
(b) swiss produce and consume large quantities of dairy products
(c) women of new england drink more milk than the women who live in some states of the southern united states
(d) people of wisconsin have relatively high life expectancies
(e) people who live in some states of the southern united states have relatively high life expectancies
14. how would the author be most likely to explain the correlation between the " salaries of california school teachers [and the] profits of nevada gambling halls" (lines 63-64)?
(a) there is a positive correlation that is probably due to california teachers' working in las vegas on weekends to increase both their salaries and increase both their salaries and nevada's gambling profits.
(b) there is a positive correlation that is probably linked to general economic trends, put no direct causal relationship exists.
(c) there is a negative correlation that is probably linked to general economic trends, but no direct causal relationship exists.
(d) there is a negative correlation because the element that controls las vegas gambling probably has agents in the calitornia school system.
(e) the author would deny the existence of any correlation whatsoever.
in most developed countries, men have higher salaries, on average, than women. much of the salary differential results from the tendency of women to be in lower-paying
(5) occupations. the question of whether this occupational employment pattern can be attributed to sex discrimination is a complex one. in fact, wage differentials among occupations are the norm rather than the
(10)exception. successful athletes commonly earn more than nobel prize-winning academics; gifted artists often cannot earn enough to survive, while mediocre investment bankers prosper. given such differences ,the question
(15)naturally arises: talent and ability being equal why does anyone-man or woman-enter a low-paying occupation? one obvious answer is personal choice. an individual may prefer, for example, to teach math at a modest
(20)salary rather than to become a more highly paid electrical engineer.some people argue that personal choice also explains sex-related wage differentials, according to this explanation, many women.
(25)because they place a high priority on parenting and performing household services, choose certain careers in which they are free to enter and leave the work force with minimum penalty. they may choose to
(30)acquire skills, such as typing and salesclerking, that do not depreciate rapidly with temporary absences from the work force. they may avoid occupational specialties that require extensive training periods, long and
(35)unpredictable hours, and willingness to relocate, all of which make speclalzation in domestic activities problematic. by choosing to in vest less in developong their career potential and to expend less effort outside
(40)the home, women must, according to this explanation, pay a price in the from of lower salaries. but women cannot be considered the victims of discrimination because they prefer the lower-paving occupartions to
(45)hugher-paying ones.
an alternative explanation for sex-related wage differentials is that women do not voluntarlly choose lower-paying occupations but are forced into them by employers and
(50)social prejudices. according to proponents of this view, employers who discriminate may refuse to hire qualified women for relatively high-paying occupations. more generally, subtle society-wide prejudices may induce
(55)women to avoid certain occupations in favor of others that are considered more suitable. indeed, the "choice" of women to specialize in parenting and performing household services may itself result from these subtle
(60)prejudices. whether the discrimination is by employers in a particular occupation or by society as a whole is irrelevant; the effect will be the same. further, if such discrimination does occur, women exchuded from certain
(65)occupations will flood others, and this increase in supply will have a depressing effect on wages in occupations dominated by women
15. which one of the following is the best little for the passage?
(a) wage differentials between men and women
(b) women in low-paying occupations: do they have a choice?
(c) sex discrimination in the workplace
(d) the role of social prejudice in women's careers.
(e) home vs. office: how does the modern woman choose?
16. in stating that "successful athletes commonly earn more than nobel prize-winning academics" (lines 10-11), the author's primary purpose is to
(a) demonstrate that education has little to do with making money
(b) suggest that people with talent and ability should not enter low-paying occupations
(c) show that highly paid occupations generally require long hours and extensive training
(d) imply that a person can be successful and still not make much money
(e) give an example of how certain occupations are better paid than others. tegardiess of inherent: worth or talent required
17. which one of the following cases is least likely to involve sex descrimination, as it is described in the passage?
(a) an employer hires a man rather than an equally qualified woman.
(b) a woman chooses to enter a high-paying occupation that uses her talent and ability.
(c) a woman chooses an occupation that is already dominated by women.
(d) a woman chooses a low-paying job that allows her to devote more time to her family.
(e) a woman chooses to avoid the pressure of being in an occupation not considered "suitable" for women
18. proponents of the "alternative explanation" (line 46) argue that
(a) employers have difficulty persuading quallried women to enter relatively high-paying occupations
(b) women choose undemanding jobs because they wish to keep their career options open
(c) women will flood domestic occupations
(d) salanes in female-dominated occupations will decrease as more women are forced into those occupations by their exclusion from others
(e) women's choice of occupation is irrelevant since they have always made less money than men and are likely to continue to do so
19. which one of the following statements is the best completion of the last paragraph of the passage?
(a) wage differentials will become more exaggerated and economic parity between men and women less and less possible.
(b) finally, women will be automatically placed in the same salary range as unskilled laborers.
(c) the question is, how long will women allow themselves to be excluded from male-dominated occupations?
(d) in the last analysis, women may need to ask themselves if they can really afford to allow sex discrimination to continue.
(e) unless society changes its views, women may never escape the confines of the few occupations designated "for women only"
20. the author's attitude toward sex discrmination as an explanation for wage differentials can best be characterized as an explanation for wage differentials can best be characterized as differentials can best be characterized as
(a) critical of society's acceptance of discrimination
(b) skeptical that discrimination is a factor
(c) convinced that the problem will get worse
(d) neutral with respect to its validity
(e) frustrated by the intractability of the problem
the starting point for any analysis of insurance classification is an obvious but fundamental fact insurance is only one of a number of ways of satisfying the demand for
(5) protection against risk with few exceptions, insurance need not be purchased; people can forgo it if insurance is too expensive indeed, as the price of coverage rises, the amount purchased and the number of people.
(10)purchasing will decline. instead of buying insurance, people will self-insure by accumulating saving to serve as a cushion in the event of loss, self-protect by spending more on loss protection, or simply use the
(15)money not spent on insurance to purchase other goods and services an insurer must compete against these alternatives., even in the absence of competition from other insurers.one method of competing for protection
(20)dollars is to classify potential purchasers into groups according to their probability of loss and the potential magnitude of losses if they occur. different risk classes may then be charged different premiums, depending on
(25)this expected loss. were it not for the need to compete for protection dollars, an insurer could simply charge each individual an insurer could simply charge each individual a premium based on the average expected loss of all its insureds (plus a margin for profit and
(30)expenses), without incurring classification costs. in constructing risk classes, the insurer's goal is to calculate the expected loss of each insured, and to place insureds, with similar expected losses into the same.
(35)class, in order to charge each the same rate. an insurer can capture protection dollars by classifying because, through classification, it can offer low-risk individuals lower prices. classification, however, involves two costs.
(40)first, the process of classification is costly. insurers must gather data and perform statistical operations on it; marketing may also be more costly when prices are not uniform. second, classification necessarily
(45)rauses premiums for poor risks, who purchase less coverage as a result. in the aggregate, classification is thus worthwhile to an insurer only when the gains produced from extra sales and fewer pry-outs outweigh
(50)classificaton costs plus the costs of lost sales. even in the absence of competition from other insurers, an insurer who engages in at least some classification is likely to capture more protection dollars than it loses.
(55) when there is not only competition for available protection dollars, but competition among insurers for premium dollars, the value of risk classification to insurers becomes even clearer. the more refined (and accurate) an
(60)insurer's risk classifications, the more capable it is of "skimming" good risks away from insurers whose classifications are less refined. if other insurers do not respond, either by refining their own classifications or
(65)by raising prices and catering mainly to high risks, their "book" of risks will contain a higher mixture of poor risks who are still being charged premiums calculated for average risks these insurers will attract
(70)additional poor risks, and this resulting adverse selection will further disadvantage their competitive positions.
21. which one of the following best identifies the main topic of the passage?
(a) reduction of competition in the insurance business
(b) classification of potential insurance purchasers
(c) risk avoidance in insurance sales
(d) insurance protection and premiums
(e) methods of insurance classifying
22. the passage mentions all of the following as possible or certain costs of classifying except the cost of
(a) collecting facts
(b) conducting statistical analyses
(c) selling insurance at different prices
(d) a decrease in purchases by poor risks
(e) larger, albeit fewer, claims
23. which one of the following is closest to the author's expressed position on competition in the insurance business?
(a) it has a significant influence on most aspects of the insurance industry.
(b) it is a relevant factor, but it has little practical consequence.
(c) it is a basic but not very apparent element of the insurance business.
(d) it provides a strong incentive for insurers to classify potential customers.
(e) it is influential in insurance marketing practices.
24. the passage suggests that if all insurers classified risk, who among the following would be adversely affected?
(a) all insurance purchasers
(b) insurance purchasers who would be classified as poor risks
(c) individuals who self-insured or self protected
(d) insurers who had a high proportion of good risks in their "book" of risks
(e) insurers with the most refined risk classifications
25. given the discussion in the first paragraph, what is the distinction, if any, between "insurance" and "self-protection"?
(a) there is very little or no distinction between the two terms.
(b) insurance is a kind of self-protection.
(c) self-protection is a kind of insurance.
(d) insurance and self-protection are two of several alternative means to a specific end
(e) insurance and self-protection are the only two alternative means to a specific end.
26. which one of the following is most closely analogous to the process of classification in insurance, as it is described in the passage?
(a) devising a profile of successful employees and hiring on the basis of the profile
(b) investigating the fuel efficiency of a make of automobile and deciding whether or not to buy on that basis
(c) assessing an investor's willingness to take risks before suggesting a specific investment
(d) making price comparisons on potential major purchases and then seeking discounts from competing dealers
(e) comparing prices for numerous minor nims and the selecting one store for future purchases.