Questions 1-10 are based on the following passage

This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Gilbert, Stern Men. ©

2000 by Elizabeth Gilbert. Ruth Thomas spent her childhood

on Fort Niles Island with her father and now, as a teenager,

attends a boarding school arranged for by her mother.

It was Ruth Thomas’s firm position that she belonged

nowhere but on Fort Niles Island. This was the position she

took with her mother: she was truly happy only on Fort Niles;

Fort Niles was in her blood and soul; and the only people who

understood her were the residents of Fort Niles Island. None of

this, it must be said, was entirely true.

It was important to Ruth in principle that she feel happy

on Fort Niles, although, for the most part, she was pretty bored

there. She missed the island when she was away from it, but

when she returned, she immediately found herself at a loss for

diversion. She made a point of taking a long walk around the

shoreline the minute she came home (Tve been thinking about

this all year!” she would say), but the walk took only a few

hours, and what did she think about on that walk? Not much.

There was a seagull; there was a seal; there was another

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seagull. The scenery was as familiar to her as her bedroom

ceiling. She took books down to the shore, claiming that she

loved to read near the pounding surf, but the sad fact is that

many places on this Earth offer better reading environments

than wet, barnacle-covered rocks. When Ruth was away from

Fort Niles, the island became endowed with the characteristics

of a distant paradise, but when she returned to it, she found her

home cold and damp and windy and uncomfortable.

Still, whenever she was on Fort Niles, Ruth wrote letters

to her mother, saying, “Finally I can breathe again!”

More than anything, Ruth’s passion for Fort Niles was an

expression of protest. It was her resistance against those who

would send her away, supposedly for her own good. Ruth

would have much preferred to determine what was good for

her. She had great confidence that she knew herself best and

that, given free rein, would have made more correct choices.

She certainly wouldn’t have elected to send herself to an elite

private school hundreds of miles away, where girls were

concerned primarily with the care of their skin and horses. No

horses for Ruth, thank you. She was not that kind of girl. She

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was more rugged. It was boats that Ruth loved, or so she

constantly said. It was Fort Niles Island that Ruth loved. It was

fishing that Ruth loved.

In truth, Ruth had spent time working with her father on

his lobster boat, and it had never been a terrific experience. She

was strong enough to do the work, but the monotony killed her.

Working as a sternman meant standing in the back of the boat,

hauling up traps, picking out lobsters, baiting traps and shoving

them back in the water, and hauling up more traps. And more

traps and more traps. It meant getting up before dawn and

eating sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. It meant seeing the

same scenery again and again, day after day, and rarely

venturing more than two miles from shore. It meant spending

hour upon hour alone with her father on a small boat, where the

two of them never seemed to get along.

On one of their early trips, Ruth warned her father about

a barrel drifting up on his “port side,” and he laughed in her

face.

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 “Port side?” he said. “This isn't the Navy, Ruth. You

don’t need to worry about port and starboard. The only

direction you need to worry about is staying out of my

way."

Ruth seemed to get on his nerves even when she

wasn’t trying to, although sometimes she did so on

purpose, just to pass the time.

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Questions 11 -21 are based on the following passage.

This passage is adapted from Joshua Greene, Moral

Tribes. © 2013 by Joshua D. Greene.

In 1995, a U.S. News & World Report survey posed

the following question to readers: “If someone sues you

and you win the case, should he pay your legal costs?”

Eighty-five percent of respondents said yes. Others got

this question: “If you sue someone and lose the case,

should y'ou pay his costs?” This time, only 44 percent said

yes. As this turnabout illustrates, one’s sense of fairness is

easily tainted by self-interest. This is considered biased

fairness, rather than simple bias, because people are

genuinely motivated to be fair. Suppose the magazine had

posed both versions of the question simultaneously. Few

respondents would have said, “The loser should pay if I’m

the winner, but the winner should pay if I’m the loser.”

We genuinely want to be fair, but in most disputes there is

a range of options that might be seen as fair, and we tend

to favor the ones that suit us best. Many experiments have

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documented this tendency in the lab. The title of a Dutch

paper nicely summarizes the drift of these findings:

“Performance-based pay is fair, particularly when I

perform better.” A series of negotiation experiments by

Linda Babcock, George Loewenstein, and colleagues

illuminates the underlying psychology of biased fairness.

In some of these experiments, pairs of people negotiated

over a settlement for a motorcyclist who had been hit by a

car. The details of the hypothetical case were based on a

real case that had been tried by a judge in Texas. At the

start of the experiment, the subjects were randomly

assigned to their roles as plaintiff and defendant. Before

negotiating, they separately read twenty-seven pages of

material about the case, including witness testimony,

maps, police reports, and the testimonies of the real

defendant and plaintiff. After reading this material, they

were asked to guess what the real judge had awarded the

plaintiff, and they did this knowing which side they would

be on. Urey were given a financial incentive to guess

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accurately, and their guesses were not revealed to the

opponents, lest they weaken their bargaining positions.

Following the subsequent negotiation, the subjects were

paid real money in proportion to the size of the settlement,

with the plaintiff subject getting more money for a larger

settlement and the defendant subject getting more money

for a smaller one. Die settlement could be anywhere from

S 0 to $ 100,000. The pairs negotiated for thirty minutes,

with their negotiations divided into six five-minute

periods. Both subjects lost money in “court costs” as the

clock ticked, and failure to agree after thirty minutes

resulted in an additional financial penalty for both

negotiators.

On average, the plaintiffs’ guesses about the judges

award were about S15.000 higher than those of the

defendants, and the bigger the. discrepancy between the

two guesses, the worse the negotiation went. In other

words, the subjects* perceptions of reality were distorted

by self-interest. What’s more, these distortions played a

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big role in the negotiation. Pairs with relatively small

discrepancies failed to agree only 3 percent of the time,

while the negotiating pairs with relatively large

discrepancies failed to agree 30 percent of the time. In a

different version of the experiment, the negotiators didn’t

know which side they would be on until after they made

their guesses about the judge’s settlement. This dropped

the overall percentage of negotiators who failed to agree

from 28 percent to 6 percent.

These experiments reveal that people are biased

negotiators, but, more important, they reveal that their

biases are unconscious. Plaintiffs guessed high about the

judge’s award, and defendants guessed low, but they

weren’t consciously inflating or deflating their guesses.

(Once again, they had financial incentives to guess

accurately.) Rather, it seems that knowing which side of a

dispute you’re on unconsciously changes your thinking

about what’s fair. It changes the way you process the

information. In a related experiment, the researchers found

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that people were better able to remember pretrial material

that supported their side. These unconsciously biased

perceptions of fairness make it harder for otherwise

reasonable people to reach agreements, often to the

detriment of both sides.

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Questions 22-32 are based on the following passages.

Passage 1 is adapted from David A. Kessler, "A New

Crack at Friction" ©2001 by Macmillan Magazines Ltd.

Passage 2 is adapted from Peter Weiss, "Model May

Expose How Friction Lets Loose." ©2001 by Society for

Science & the Public.

Passage 1

Friction is a ubiquitous feature of everyday life.

Without it, we couldn’t walk, tires wouldn’t roll, and

ballpoint pens would fail to write. But what is friction, and

how does it act?

The basic properties are simple to grasp. To move a

solid object from rest on top of a solid surface, a minimum

force has to be applied to overcome the force of friction.

This force is proportional to the compressive force

pushing the two surfaces together, in this case the weight

of the object. Intriguingly, this minimum force is

independent of the area of contact between the body and

the surface. So the friction force on a rectangular solid

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resting on a table is the same whichever face is in contact

with the surface. These laws have been known since the

mid 1700s. It is one of the dirty little secrets of physics

that while we physicists can tell you a lot about quarks,

quasars and other exotica, there is still no universally

accepted explanation of the basic laws of friction.

'Ihe standard picture of friction is that the solid

surfaces are not really planar, but are rough on a

microscopic scale. The presence of these tiny surface

features, or asperities as they are known, prevents the

surfaces from coming into full contact. So the true contact

area is much smaller than its apparent value, and is

proportional to the compressive force between the

surfaces, in much the same way that the contact area

between a car tire and the road increases when you load

your car. Problems have arisen when physicists tried to

confirm this picture using calculation from first principles.

The goal is to construct, either analytically or on the

computer, a solid body and surface from atoms with

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prescribed interactions, and calculate the friction force

directly. But previous attempts at this found that the two

surfaces ride freely on top of each other because of the

mismatch between the asperities on the two surfaces, so

there is no friction.

One solution to this problem, suggested by Muser,

Wenning and Robbins, attributes a crucial role to dirt - the

diffuse collection of foreign mobile atoms trapped

between the two surfaces. According to the authors’

numerical simulations, these mobile atoms quickly find

appropriate gaps between the surfaces where they become

trapped. These atoms then “lock” the two surfaces in

place. To move the top surface, it has to be pushed up and

over the dirt atoms, the force required being proportional

to the weight oi the top body. Furthermore, the calculated

force is seen to be essentially independent of the apparent

contact area.

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Passage 2

Now, two physicists have modeled surface

slippagefriction's retreat-as bands of atoms in the top

surface momentarily leaping up from the underlying

surface. Millions of such ripples propagate simultaneously

along the interface when, for instance a book slides on a

table, they say.

For years, physicists have tried to explain this

largescale behavior in terms of atomic-scale events.

They’ve had some success by portraying surfaces as

jagged on an atomic scale. That way, very little material

actually touches. However, scientists still struggle to

explain why protrusions from two surfaces would stick

together at all.

There’s incentive to find out. A better understanding

of friction could improve scientists' grasp of countless

phenomena, such as engine performance and tool wear.

Moreover, friction is particularly vexing for developers of

micromachines.

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 In the new mathematical model, Eric Gerde and

Michael P. Marder build upon the physics of how cracks

form and propagate through solids. Titink of a bump in a

rug, says Marder. As people know from everyday

experience, pushing such bumps along can move a big rug

over a floor.

Something similar may be happening at the atomic

scale between sliding surfaces. Marder says that the

combination of downward and sideways forces on an

object sliding along an underlying surface can translate

into upward forces that open “cracks" at the interface, akin

to bumps in a rug. These cracks amount to a series of

arches, each a few atomic diameters across. As these

waves of separation advance along the interface, the

overlying surface comes back down behind each wave and

reconnects with the surface below. A plus for this

hypothesis is that it predicts the simple relationship

between compressive forces, like weight, and frictional

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forces. Yet it doesn’t require the surfaces to be rough on

an atomic scale, as previous models do.

15
Questions 33-42 are based on the following passage.

This passage is adapted from a speech delivered in 1795

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the speech, Coleridge, an

English poet, discusses the French Revolution, which

began in 1789.

Revolutions are sudden to the unthinking only.

Strange rumblings and confused noises still precede these

earthquakes and hurricanes of the moral world. Hie

process of revolution in France has been dreadful, and

should incite us to examine with an anxious eye the

motives and manners of those, whose conduct and

opinions seem calculated to forward a similar event in our

own country. The oppositionists to " things as they are,"

are divided into many and different classes. To delineate

them with an unflattering accuracy may be a delicate, but

it is a necessary, task, in order that we may enlighten, or at

least be aware of, the misguided men who have enlisted

under the banners of liberty, from no principles or with

bad ones....

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 The first class among the professed friends of liberty

is composed of men, who unaccustomed to the labor of

thorough investigation, and not particularly oppressed by

the burthens of state, are yet impelled by their feelings to

disapprove of its grosser depravities, and prepared to give

an indolent vote in favor of reform. Their sensibilities not

braced by the cooperation of fixed principles, they offer no

sacrifices to the divinity of active virtue. Their political

opinions depend with weather-cock uncertainty on the

winds of rumour, that blow from France. On the report of

French victories they blaze into republicanism, at a tale of

French excesses they darken into aristocrats. These dough

baked patriots are not however useless. This oscillation of

political opinion will retard the day of revolution, and it

will operate as a preventive to its excesses. Indecisiveness

of character, though the effect of timidity, is almost

always associated with benevolence.

Wilder features characterize the second class... They

listen only to the inflammatory harangues of some mad

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headed enthusiast, and imbibe from them poison, not food;

rage, not liberty. Unillumined by philosophy, and

stimulated to a lust of revenge by aggravated wrongs, they

would make the altar of freedom stream with blood, while

the grass grew in the desolated halls of justice.

We contemplate those principles with horror. Yet

they possess a kind of wild justice well calculated to

spread them among the grossly ignorant. To unenlightened

minds, there are terrible charms in the idea of retribution,

however savagely it be inculcated. The groans ot the

oppressors make fearful yet pleasant music to the ear of

him, whose mind is darkness, and into whose soul the iron

has entered....

There is a third class among the friends of freedom,

who possess not the wavering character of the first

description, nor the ferocity last delineated. They pursue

the interests of freedom steadily, but with narrow and self-

centering views: they anticipate with exultation the

abolition of privileged orders, and of acts that persecute by

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exclusion from the right of citizenship. Whatever is above

them they are most willing to drag down; but every

proposed alteration that would elevate their poorer

brethren, they rank among the dreams of the visionaries;

as if there were anything in the superiority' of Lord to

Gentleman, so mortifying in the barrier, so fatal to

happiness in the consequences, as the more real distinction

of master and servant, of rich man and of poor. Wherein

am I made worse by my ennobled neighbor? Do the

childish titles of Aristocracy detract from my domestic

comforts, or prevent my intellectual acquisitions? But

those institutions of society which should condemn me to

the necessity of twelve hours daily toil, would make myr

soul a slave, and sink the rational being into the mere

animal. It is a mockery of our fellow-creatures’ wrongs to

call them equal in rights, when by the bitter compulsion of

their wants we make them inferior to us in all that can

soften the heart, or dignify the understanding. Let us not

say that this is the work of time — that it is impracticable

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at present, unless we each in our individual capacities do

strenuously and perseveringly endeavor to diffuse among

our domestics those comforts and that illumination which

far beyond all political ordinances are the true equalizers

of men.

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Questions 43-52 are based on the following passage and

supplementary materials.

This passage is adapted from Lee Alan Dugatkin,

Principles of Animal Behavior, © 2009 by W. W. Norton

& Company, Inc The book concerns natural selection, a

process that results in the survival and reproductive

success of individuals or groups best adjusted to their

environment.

As an example of natural selection acting on animal

behavior, let’s examine how individuals in social groups

respond to strangers. For animals that live in stable

groups, strangers-unknown individuals from outside one’s

group-represent a significant danger. Such individuals

may compete for scarce resources, disrupt group dynamics

that have long been in place, and so on. As such,

ethologists are interested in whether animals from group-

living species display a fear of strangers, a phenomenon

technically known as xenophobia. In particular ethologists

hypothesize that xenophobia may be especially strong

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when resources are scarce, since competition for such

resources will be intense under such a scenario, and

keeping strangers away may have a strong impact on the

lifetime reproductive success of group members.

To examine the effect of resource scarcity on the

evolution of xenophobia, Andrew Spinks and his

colleagues examined xenophobia in the common mole rat.

Common mole rats live in South Africa in underground

colonies made up of two to fourteen individuals. They are

an ideal species in which to examine xenophobia and its

possible connection to resource availability for two

reasons: First, all populations of common mole rats are

“tightly knit” in the sense that each group typically has a

single pair of “reproductive individuals” who produce

most of the offspring in a colony, which means that all

group members tend to be genetic relatives. Second,

populations of common mole rats differ in terms of the

amount of resources in their environments. Some common

mole rat populations inhabit mesic (moderately moist)

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environments that presents only mild resource limitations,

while other populations live in arid environments and face

intense limitations on their resources. This variation in

resource availability is largely due to the fact that mesic

environments have about four times as much rainfall as

arid environments.

Spinks and his colleagues examined whether

populations from arid areas were more xenophobic than

those from mesic environments, as one might predict

based on our above discussion of natural selection,

resources, and xenophobia. To do this, they conducted 206

“aggression” trials. Tire protocol for these experiments

was quite simple: Two mole rats-one from the arid and

one from the mesic environmentwere placed together, and

any aggression that occurred between them was recorded,

liais procedure was repeated for two mole rats from

different mesic colonies. Resu Its were clear-cut: For both

male vs. male and female vs. female, when the pair of

individuals were from different colonies, fear of strangers

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and aggression toward such strangers was much more

pronounced in the common mole rats from the arid

environment, where resources were limited, than it was in

the common mole rats from the mesic environment. This

result was not a function of individuals from arid

populations just being more aggressive in general. Control

experiments demonstrated that when two individuals who

knew each other from the arid population were tested

together, aggression disappeared-thus it was the

identification of a stranger that initiated the aggression.

This is precisely the sort of behavior that natural selection

should favor.

Common mole rats that are lucky enough to end up

reproducing almost always move from their home colony

to find a mate. What this means is that some strangers that

are encountered by members of a social group are

potential mates, and hence perhaps worth tolerating.

Natural selection then should not simply favor all

xenophobia, but a xenophobia that is sensitive to the sex

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of the stranger. In support of this, in trials in which the two

individuals tested were a male and a female, Spinks and

his colleagues found that while aggression was still

uncovered in the low-resource, arid population, the level

of aggression decreased dramatically when compared to

aggression in same-sex interactions. In other words,

natural selection has produced common mole rats that

temper their fear of strangers as a function of both where

they live and the sex of the strangers.

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