#25 - Main Point

[itstanaya]

Answer D states "an examination of some new psychological considerations regarding risk and their application to another field of inquiry" - what is other "field of inquiry?" Does this answer allude to the fact that the author is using research based on individual/corporate/entrepreneurial risk-taking behavior and applying it to international conflict?

Also, I wasn't quite sure why A was wrong. It seemed that the author was challenging previously accepted notions of decision making (I paraphrased this as "motives for decision making") and analyzing new theories/research.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi itstanaya,

Yes, you've correctly understood the parts of answer choice D. The "new psychological considerations regarding risk" are the "[r]ecent investigations into the psychology of decision making" referenced in the first sentence. The "field of inquiry" is the field of "international conflict and crisis" explored in the third paragraph.

The primary problem with answer choice A is that it is incomplete. It's not a bad (though perhaps not perfect) description of paragraph three of the passage. But there is nothing in answer choice A that "covers" the substantial portion of the passage that contextualizes and describes the recent research on risk-taking. So the answer doesn't cover most of paragraph one, and doesn't cover any of paragraph two.

Since we're looking for the answer that "most accurately" describes the passage, answer choice D is better because it is more complete.

I hope this helps!