Critical Reasoning

BTGmoderatorRO wrote:Research conducted in restaurants all over Europe found that hungry people are more inclined to help the poor than are people who just had lunch. Customers who entered the restaurants gave beggars three times the amount existing customers gave them.

In evaluating the argument, it would be most useful to compare

A. The kinds of food people had eaten before they gave the beggars larger amounts of money.
B. Different kinds of restaurants and their influence on people's generosity.
C. The amount of money people had in their pockets before and after they visited a restaurant.
D. The amount of money donated by people who donated twice ( when entering and exiting) with that of those who donated once
E. The number of donors entering with the number of donors exiting
OA is c
Can anyone explaining why option C is the correct answer

This is an Evaluate/Assess the argument question type. As discussed here, in an Evaluate question, we are looking for a question, which when answered either way would either Strengthen or Weaken the argument. Therefore, a good way to approach this sort of a question is to treat it as either a Strengthen or a Weaken question type, based on whichever your strong(er) suit is.

Let us break the argument into its constituent premises and conclusion.

Premise: Customers who entered the restaurants gave the beggars three times more than the existing customers

Conclusion: Hungry people are more likely than well-fed people to help the poor

One of the fundamental things to do in any CR question is to identify the assumptions - i.e., the jumps in the line of reasoning - made by the author. One of the good ways to do this is to do a quick word-match between the premises and the conclusion and notice how the premise(s) differs from the conclusion. One of the primary assumptions made by the author here is that 'giving more money = helping the poor'. The correct answer choice would target this assumption.

Let us approach this as a Weaken question. We are looking for an option that, when answered at either extreme, would say that 'giving more money != helping the poor'.

A - The kinds of food people had eaten before they gave the beggars larger amounts of money - Out of scope - we are not concerned with the types of food people had. INCORRECT
B. Different kinds of restaurants and their influence on people's generosity - Irrelevant - we are concerned with restaurants as a whole rather than comparing between restaurants. INCORRECT
C. The amount of money people had in their pockets before and after they visited a restaurant - CORRECT. If people entering the restaurant had much more money left - say $1000 - than the customers who had already eaten - say $100, then the existing customers were actually MORE generous even if they donated half of what the hungry customers did. This scenario would weaken the argument. Alternatively, if the customers entering the restaurant had less money left over than the existing customers, then it would seem like that the hungry customers were more generous, strengthening the author's argument. Since one extreme end of the answer weakens the argument and the other end strengthens, this is the best answer. CORRECT
D. The amount of money donated by people who donated twice ( when entering and exiting) with that of those who donated once - Out of scope - we are only concerned with which group was more likely to help the poor. INCORRECT
E. The number of donors entering with the number of donors exiting - Irrelevant - the number of donors entering/exiting doesn't matter; we are concerned with the two different groups as a whole and their generosity. INCORRECT

Hence, C is the correct answer.

Please let me know in case anything doesn't make sense.