calendarBack
Verbal

/

Reading Comprehension

/

Reading Comprehension II
ALL MODULES

CAT 2025 Lesson : Reading Comprehension II - Elimination of options

bookmarked

5.2 Elimination of options

Elimination of incorrect options is a key technique to be used. The authors test our logical reasoning skills, our focus and keenness, as well as our vocabulary by having an option which seems correct but isn't.

You must eliminate options which are:

1) Factually incorrect
2) Logically inconsistent
3) Not in line with the author's PoV
4) Not in keeping with the author's tone
5) Taking something literally, which was meant to be symbolic, metaphorical or sarcastic
6) Mentioning example instead of facts (if the facts are correctly represented in another option)
7) Long and meandering (if another concise option is correct)
8) Do not have all the information (if another option has complete information)

Some other red flags are:

1) Options which seem correct, but have information which is incorrect or not in keeping with the passage
2) Options which are too harsh or complete (unless the author is strongly for or against something)
3) Options which have words from the passage, but do not mean anything overall
4) Options which have information from the passage, but are not relevant for this question

A focussed read of the passage will eliminate some of these doubts and make it easier for you. Having said that, it is important to practise these, so that you are able to eliminate incorrect options. Note down any errors that you make, and try and understand what was the mistake in the option you selected. Keeping track of these will mean that you pick up on these and your accuracy will improve.

Example 13

Read the passage and answer the question which follows:

It’s a little unclear whether Joseph Stalin actually said, “the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic”, but it seems about right. The number of lives the Soviet dictator ended is so large that it is mind-boggling. And it seems “mind-boggling” is a literal description of what happens when we encounter large numbers. It seems humans don’t really know how to process figures which they can’t personally relate to, and this has surprising consequences.

In 1992, a study explored how we assign value to things that don’t have a market price... Researchers asked people how much they would pay to save 2,000, 20,000, or 200,000 seabirds that were covered in oil [after an oil spill], to test how the scale of a disaster affected the perceived cost of fixing it. What they found was that the scale didn’t really affect the number at all. For 2,000 seabirds the average value assigned was $80. For 20,000, $78, and for 200,000, $88.

This phenomenon is extension neglect. It seems that we don’t cope well with escalating numbers... The implications of this are huge. Behavioural economics has demonstrated that we navigate most of life through heuristic shortcuts, best guesses and instinct. But if one of those heuristics is blindness to scale, it’s a bigger issue than just not being able to process. It implies that bigger numbers are inherently dehumanising. We become detached from the people, or birds, or wild habitats behind them...

A starker version of the seabird experiment was carried out by two academics, Loran Nordgren and Mary-Hunter Morris McDonnell... [Two groups of people are] told that a financial advisor has defrauded some clients and they are asked to set a punishment of between one and 10 years in prison. The first group is told there are three victims and the second group is told there are 30 victims. The first group, on average, handed down a sentence of 4.8 years. The second group – the group that were told there were 10 times as many victims – handed down on average just 3.8 years.

The consequences of this gap are far-reaching, in smaller and more pervasive ways than Stalin’s quote or the seabird study demonstrate. As our interactions with the world become more digital, from the way we access government services to how we manage our money – even how we stay in touch with our friends – this oversight gains significance. When you start to look for it, you see these gaps everywhere. Whether it’s the governments’ unauthorised spying, smart TVs eavesdropping on users to improve voice commands, Facebook broadcasting whatever people are doing to their friends without their knowledge, or Uber’s endless PR gaffes as it plays with our data, our inability to connect large datasets with real people is rampant. Big numbers dehumanise us, and the bigger the numbers, the worse the effect... Organisations can be amazing at understanding what their audiences want, but totally blind to how they might feel. Feelings don’t really create a lot of data points. The social, economic, and even humanitarian impact of the data we produce is enormous, even if it’s not quantifiable. Perhaps it’s time we acknowledge the value of empathy, whether we can measure it or not.


1) According to the author, humans ________________ big numbers.

(1) cannot understand
(2) neglect
(3) cannot perform calculations with
(4) cannot process

Solution

This is a Direct Single question, and the answer is mentioned in the first paragraph. The author tells us that humans don’t really know how to process figures which they can’t personally relate to. These numbers are big numbers, and this helps us infer that option (4) is the correct choice.

Option (1) can be eliminated, as option (4) is directly mentioned.
Option (2) is incorrect, as it is taking the term extension neglect literally.
Option (4) can be eliminated using logic, as we have enough tools (calculators, computers) to calculate using big numbers.

Therefore, option (4) is the correct choice.

Answer: (4) cannot process

2) Which of the following would the author agree with?

(1) People don’t seem to care about the life and comfort of seabirds.
(2) The larger the number of people impacted, the lower our sympathy or empathy for them.
(3) Our blindness to scale impacts us more and more in today’s digital world.
(4) People can feel empathy because it is not quantifiable.

Solution

This is a Direct Multiple question, and we need to validate each option with the passage.

Option (1) is factually incorrect, as we know that people have agreed to pay to help save seabirds affected by an oil spill.

Option (2) is harsh, and also incorrect. Our empathy does not necessarily decrease, we are simply unable to process incidents impacting a larger group. Extrapolating the experiment about seabirds, people wanted to pay slightly more to save 200,000 seabirds than 2000. Even though this is about birds, we cannot say that empathy definitely reduces with more people.

Option (3) is correct and is borne out by the last paragraph (as our interactions with the world become more digital, ...this oversight gains significance).

Option (4) is incorrect, we cannot state that not being quantifiable is the reason for people being able to empathise. Feelings and quantities are unrelated.

Thus, we can eliminate all the other options and select option (3).

Answer: (3) Our blindness to scale impacts us more and more in today’s digital world.

3) Why is the experiment conducted by Nordgren and McDonnel “starker”?

(1) It proves that a larger number of victims dehumanises the incident.
(2) People did not care that the number of victims had tripled.
(3) This was a study involving humans and not ordinary birds.
(4) There was a prison term involved.

Solution

Nordgren and McDonnell conducted an experiment which was starker than the seabird experiment. When we compare both the experiments – there are two major differences. One, the study was with humans and not birds. Second, we learn that the average sentence decreased when the number of victims were increased 10x. This second point is the key point in the context of extension neglect, and the author's key point.

Therefore, we should select option (1) as the correct choice, as it has the second point. Option (3) speaks about this study being about humans, but option (1) has the primary point about numbers. Similarly, option (4), while factual, is not the primary difference, and hence, can be eliminated.

Option (2) is factually incorrect, as the number is 10x and not tripled. Therefore, we can eliminate this option as well and select option (1) as the correct choice.

Answer:(1) It proves that a larger number of victims dehumanises the incident.

4) What is the conclusion that we can draw from the last paragraph?

(1) Humans are bad at numbers, but good at feelings.
(2) Humans may be bad at processing numbers, but corporations are bad at emotions.
(3) Humans need to value emotions and feelings, as we can’t process large numbers.
(4) Big companies and governments don't realise that we can't process large numbers.

Solution

In the last paragraph, the author explains that extension neglect is becoming a bigger issue as we are becoming a digital society, with multiple examples (companies, governments). The author has also given us a solution – feelings such as empathy.

Therefore, we can infer that inability to process large numbers or lots of data is a problem, but we should acknowledge the importance of feelings. This is mentioned in option (3), which is the correct choice.

Option (1) is a blanket statement – humans are bad at big numbers, not numbers in general.

Option (2) is incorrect as it differentiates between people and corporations – however, corporations comprise of people. The author is not differentiating between people and companies, just telling us how we have become a society focussing on data and numbers, not feelings.

Option (4) is not the main conclusion and can also be eliminated.

Therefore, option (3) is the correct choice.

Answer: (3) Humans need to value emotions and feelings, as we can’t process large numbers.

Want to read the full content

Unlock this content & enjoy all the features of the platform

Subscribe Now arrow-right
videovideo-lock