Scientist: In an experiment, dogs had access to a handle they could pull to release food into a nearby enclosure that contained a familiar dog and nothing else, contained an unfamiliar dog and nothing else, or was empty. The dogs typically released more food to the familiar dog than to the unfamiliar dog. This suggests that dogs are more motivated to help other dogs they know than to help unfamiliar dogs.

The scientist’s argument would be most strengthened if it were true that, in the experiment, the dogs with access to the handle tended to release more food when

Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E

(A) Incorrect. The conclusion is: “This suggests that dogs are more motivated to help other dogs they know than to help unfamiliar dogs”. If the dogs’ behavior was encouraged by a familiar person, we actually start wondering whether it was the motivation to help that made the dogs release more food, or some external factor not discussed in the passage. It certainly does not strengthen the argument.

Beware of this option. Many times, test-takers end up selecting an answer that actually does the opposite of what has been asked in the question. This answer, if anything, weakens the argument that dogs are more motivated to help familiar dogs.

(B) Incorrect. How dogs react to an empty enclosure compared with one containing an unfamiliar dog does not impact the argument in any way. Even if we take motivation to help as the reason for dogs releasing food, all this option tells us is that dogs are not particularly motivated to help unfamiliar dogs. This does not strengthen the argument that dogs are more motivated to help familiar dogs.

If I simply show Y is low in absolute terms, that does not strengthen that X is more than Y. X may be low as well.

(C) Incorrect. If the behaviour of the dog in the enclosure impacts the other dogs’ propensity to release food in any way, their higher motivation to help familiar dogs, in fact, gets questioned.  

(D) Incorrect. How the dogs with the handle reacted to the enclosure’s dogs’ interest level does not help strengthen the argument at all. In fact, if the enclosure’s dogs’ interest level impacted the propensity of dogs with the handle to release food, we question whether ‘motivation to help’ was the driving factor or not.

(E) Correct. This option compares the reaction to a familiar dog in the enclosure with the reaction to a familiar dog not in the enclosure.

To understand this option, let’s first understand a possible challenge to the given argument. Can somebody argue that the dog with the handle released more food in case of a familiar dog not because it wanted to help the familiar dog but because the presence of the familiar dog stimulated him, in some way, to press the handle more often? Essentially, we are doubting whether there was any ‘intention’ to help. If the dog with the handle released more food just on the sight of the familiar dog, regardless of whether the familiar dog got the food or not, we would have a strong reason to doubt that there was an ‘intention’ to help.

This option is around the above aspect. Since dogs release more food when the familiar dog was in the enclosure, we are further convinced that the dogs wanted to help the familiar dog, and it was not just the sight of a familiar dog that triggered the response. If it were just the sight, then the dogs would have released equal quantities of food even when the visible familiar dog was not inside the enclosure. The dogs releasing less food in this scenario (when the enclosure was empty) lends credence to the notion that the dogs realized that the familiar dogs outside the enclosure will not be helped by the released food, and thus their propensity to release food was lower.

Explanation: