Q18 - Liang: Watching moves in which violence

[mshinners]

Question Type:
ID the Agreement

Stimulus Breakdown:
L: Violent movies make people violent, so kids shouldn't be allowed to watch them.

S: Dramatic violent movies are cathartic, so adults should be allowed to watch them.

Answer Anticipation:
L and S's conclusion don't overlap, so we should focus our attention on the premises. They both bring up an effect of watching violence, so the correct answer will probably deal with that.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Half scope at most. L doesn't talk about this. S does, but only in the context of violence.

(B) Out of scope. L is the closest to having an opinion, but he just mentions the movies themselves, not the audience, with respect to this statement.

(C) Half scope. S doesn't talk about movies being restricted, or people becoming violent.

(D) Boom. Both L and S mention an effect of watching violent films (including dramatic ones), so they must both believe that they are at least partially understood.

(E) Out of scope. Neither speaker discusses an attraction to these films.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Watch out for ID the Agreement questions! Disagreement questions are more common, so it's easy to get lulled into missing an Agreement question.

#officialexplanation

[HughM388]

So we're concluding that, though Liang and Sarah fundamentally disagree in their interpretations, or understandings, of the effects of watching violence, they still agree that those effects are understood?

I think it's a little trickier than implied by the explanation above. It's quite a stretch to conclude that two people agree that the color of an apple is known when one of them says "This apple is blue" and the other says "This apple is orange." Do they therefore agree that the apple's color is known? I can discern only a lack of agreement, and I'm left wondering what color the apple really is. Where is the mutual understanding?

The "with each other" here is also too slippery by far. One could argue that with each other is already implicit in the term "agree." But I think the fact that it's already implicit means that explicitly including it, as is done here, means that the test writers are emphasizing that Liang and Sarah are talking to each other. But based on what they're saying, one can only conclude that they are either talking past each other or that one of them isn't listening, and, consequently, that they are disagreeing with each other fundamentally about the effects of watching violence.

If we take Sarah to be responding to Liang (which isn't necessary; Liang could be responding to Sarah), then Liang would very likely have countered Sarah's response by exclaiming, "Are you hard of hearing? Did you not understand what I just said? Watching violence is not a 'vicarious' purgative experience. Violence begets further real-life aggression and violence." It's very difficult to conclude that they agree with each other when each would accuse the other of harboring a gross misunderstanding.

To conclude that there exists mutual understanding on that basis seems highly disingenuous. You could more creditably say that there is mutualor disagreement on the subject of the effects of dramatic violence. Perhaps they agree to disagree. Each may individually believe that they understand the effects of watching violence; but they do not agree with each other about that understanding. Their understandings of the effects of watching violence are highly divergent; the only thing they can agree on is that the other is very wrong in their understanding of those effects.