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Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? for CAT 2024 is part of CAT preparation. The Question and answers have been prepared according to the CAT exam syllabus. Information about Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? covers all topics & solutions for CAT 2024 Exam. Find important definitions, questions, meanings, examples, exercises and tests below for Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer?.

Solutions for Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? in English & in Hindi are available as part of our courses for CAT. Download more important topics, notes, lectures and mock test series for CAT Exam by signing up for free.

Here you can find the meaning of Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? defined & explained in the simplest way possible. Besides giving the explanation of Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer?, a detailed solution for Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? has been provided alongside types of Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? theory, EduRev gives you an ample number of questions to practice Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions with the most appropriate choice.Elected officials may have more power to shape public opinion than they realize. Two political scientists, David Broockman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Butler of Washington University in St. Louis, tested this in a series of experiments in how citizens reacted to issue-oriented letters from lawmakers.The two academics secured the agreement of eight Democratic state legislators from an unidentified Midwestern state to conduct two experiments using official letters sent from the lawmakers to their constituents and verifying the recipients' opinions before and after the letters using surveys. The results show that in both cases lawmakers who took positions opposed by their constituents, even on contested political topics, suffered no penalty for doing so, and even helped build support for those policies as constituents adopted them.This suggests that, at least at the state legislative level, elected officials holding back from communicating their stances on controversial issues might be better off making their views known. "We don't know the full effects, but this points to the ability to help build support for policies they care about," Mr. Butler said of lawmakers in an interview.In the first experiment, a single state legislator sent some constituents a letter taking a stance on an issue that the recipient had not agreed with during the initial survey, while other constituents got no letter. The issue was one of four covering regulation of mining in the lawmaker's district, government funding of school vouchers, a reduction in state income tax and permitting school districts to raise property taxes.More than half the constituents who got a letter recalled receiving mail from their representative in the follow-up survey, but there was no backlash against the lawmaker for taking an opposing stance, the researchers found. Just the act of receiving a personal letter from an elected official might have affected how a constituent viewed the sender, so the researchers designed a second experiment.They expanded the pool to seven state legislators. Again, letters expressing a policy position were sent to some constituents who disagreed with that stance, while others got a standard letter that did not express any policy positions. The researchers added an additional factor: Some of the policy letters included extensive justifications for taking the stance, while others had only a brief explanation. The letters, which did not mention the partisan affiliation of the sender, also covered a broader range of subjects, from the minimum wage to marijuana legalization to government-sponsored pensions.Again, the researchers found that constituents did not think less of their representatives when they voiced opposite view; in some cases, a constituent's opinion of the lawmaker improved and he or she embraced the policy. The length of lawmakers' arguments had very little effect. "Legislators appeared able to move constituents' opinions by stating their own positions with minimal justification; adding additional arguments did not make them more persuasive," the researchers said.According to the information provided in the passage, the second experiment:a)proved the importance of delivering cogent explanations for the state legislators' point of view.b)highlighted how personal contact matters in human communication.c)was conducted to assess the impact receiving a personal letter from an elected official even though it may contain any specific policy position.d)proved conclusively that elected officials can shape public opinion by communicating their ideas.Correct answer is option 'C'. Can you explain this answer? tests, examples and also practice CAT tests.