People are usually interested in, and often even moved by, anecdotes about individuals, whereas they rarely even pay ...

Ravi on December 31, 2018

@GLEE,

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!