Happy to help! The gist of the paradox in the stimulus is that people are really moved by anecdotes, but not statistics. However, anecdotes are misleading. But despite this, people have pretty accurate beliefs about society.
We know that people like anecdotes. Yet, nowhere in the stimulus is it mentioned that people change their beliefs based on anecdotes.
Maybe people simply like hearing about and listening to anecdotes and becoming moved by them. However, this does not mean that anecdotes are how people formulate their beliefs about society. It's very important to see this difference.
Answer choice B states that most people recognize that anecdotes tend to be about unrepresentative cases. Aha, if this is true, then that makes sense how people can be moved by anecdotes yet have fairly accurate beliefs about society. It's because even though they're moved by these anecdotes, they recognize that they're not representative, which suggests that the anecdotes don't change people's beliefs. This would help to explain why people tend to have accurate beliefs about society despite the facts mentioned in the stimulus.
Answer choice D is tricky, but it's incorrect because all it says is that statistical information is made more comprehensible when illustrated by anecdotes. Just because statistical information is more comprehensible by anecdotes doesn't mean that people would pay attention to them. They could be very comprehensible but still largely ignored. In fact, the stimulus tells us that people tend to ignore them, so whether or not statistics are made more comprehensible by anecdotes does not resolve the paradox.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have more questions!
