Multiple choice

A few decades ago it was popular to link dramatic increases in urban antisocial behavior with high population density, and to support this with studies of laboratory rats, which exhibit randomly violent behavior under conditions of extreme overcrowding. It has since become obvious that the analogy between rats and humans is simplistic at best, and leaves out considerations like human adaptability and cultural factors which are of key importance in determining human behavior. Which of the following, if true, best support the conclusion the author presents in the passage above?

  1. Testing new products on laboratory rats has sometimes led to unnecessary alarm about their adverse effects on human health.

  2. Rats thrive in the crowded condition of human urban society.

  3. Rats also exhibit unnatural behavior in conditions of extreme isolation.

  4. Although rat behavior does change in crowded conditions, what results is not random violence but a new, radically different social order.

  5. In some extremely crowded cities there is relatively little antisocial behavior, whereas some rural communities have very high rates of such behavior.
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E Correct answer
Explanation

(5) THE CONCLUSION: The analogy between rats and humans is simplistic at best and misses important elements of human behavior.

THE EVIDENCE: There is none really, just the claim that overcrowding for humans is different than overcrowding for rats, even though both sometimes lead to violent, antisocial behavior. The rats exhibit randomly violent behavior when overcrowded. If humans sometimes don't, and if they sometimes exhibit violence when there isn't overcrowding, then we have some hard evidence that the relationship between overcrowding and violence in humans is more complicated than it is in rats.

 

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