LR Question 10 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: People who are allergic to cats are actually allergic…
QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported
FACTS:
- If you’re allergic to cats, you’re actually allergic to proteins in their skin and saliva.
- Different people are allergic to different proteins.
- Every cat can cause allergic reactions.
- Many cats only cause allergic reactions in some allergic people, but not all allergic people.
ANALYSIS: This question has a lot of details, making it seem more complicated than it is.
We know that cats don’t produce the same reactions. Since skin and saliva proteins cause reactions, that means that skin and saliva proteins probably differ between cats.
___________
- ‘Any’ is a sufficient condition indicator. This says everyone is allergic to some cats. Nonsense.
- This made me laugh. There could definitely be some horrible cat that causes reactions in everybody. It could have every terrible protein.
- CORRECT. This seems likely. Otherwise all cats would cause the same people to have allergic reactions.
- The stimulus doesn’t mention intensity.
- Why would this be true? We might be able to analyze the proteins and determine which cats would cause reactions in certain people.
More Resources for Most Strongly Supported Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Most Strongly Supported questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers most strongly supported questions.
Hey,
You said that C is correct because if all cats did have the same proteins, they’d all cause the same people to have allergic reactions. But is it not possible that all cats’ proteins could be the same, but people’s bodies just make them react differently to the same exact proteins? This was my train of thought, and it threw me off on this one and caused me to eliminate C.
Thanks! Hope I explained this well enough
Hi! Good question, and you explained your reasoning clearly.
The key distinction is that the stimulus says which particular proteins are responsible varies between people. That implies there’s variation among people in what they react to, yes, but it also requires variation in the protein among cats for that individual variability to manifest in the way described.
If all cats had the exact same proteins, then people who are allergic would either (a) react to all cats, or (b) not react at all, because the trigger would be the same in every case. But the passage explicitly tells us that a given cat may cause reactions in some but not all people who are allergic to cats. That situation only makes sense if the proteins differ between cats, and different people react to different proteins.
So yes, it’s true that people vary in sensitivities, but that alone wouldn’t explain why a specific cat affects some allergic people but not others unless cats themselves vary in their protein makeup. That’s why C is most strongly supported.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any remaining confusion/questions.
Thanks! That helped a lot.
Hi,
I thought D was correct. If someone has an allergic reaction to a given cat, and another does not (as the stimulus states), wouldn’t that count as one person having a “more intense” reaction than the other?
Thank you.
Hi Rie,
Answer D says “the allergic reactions of some people . . . are more intense than the allergic reactions of other allergy sufferers”.
Note that it doesn’t compare their reactions to a particular cat – just their general reactions. Additionally, it is specifically comparing their allergic reactions, so someone not having an allergic reaction to a given cat would not be relevant to the comparison.
Hope this helps!