SAT Practice 5:
Connecting the Questions to the Passage
190 MCGRAW-HILL’S SAT
group members protect them. The bonds
among group members may make them treat
the whistle-blower, not the wrongdoer, as the
50 criminal. They do this especially if the whistle-
blower is a member of their in-group—one
does not squeal, tell tales, or inform on one’s
comrades.
Social psychologists find that we easily
55 become prejudiced. It takes the smallest hint
that you belong to one group and other people
to another for you to favor “your own” group.
The reason you belong to one group rather
than another may be no more than a prefer-
60 ence for abstract artists, Paul Klee rather than
Wassily Kandinsky. You need not even meet
and interact with the members of your own
group, but prejudice will nonetheless rear its
ugly head. It may be our football team, school,
65 town or nation, or the color of our skin. Once
fully identified with that “we,” people become
sensitive to the needs of their group and
callous toward other groups. Outsiders cease
to matter. The stronger our identification with
70 the “we,” the blinder we become to the
humanity we share with “them.” Out of this
psychology comes the nasty side of history
and the human race: the world of “ethnic
cleansing,” genocide, racial prejudice, and
75 global terrorism. Thus, we may be born alone,
but we quickly learn to identify ourselves with
a group, leading, in some cases, to barbaric
consequences.- The primary purpose of this passage is to
(A) examine a problem
(B) compare human behavior with bird behavior
(C) disprove a theory
(D) suggest an alternative
(E) analyze a phenomenon
The following is an excerpt from a recent book by
two science writers on the evolution of human
intelligence.Where can freedom be found? Perhaps in a
flock of estuary birds? Flying together at high
Linespeeds, thousands of birds maneuver with
precise coordination. The flock flies this way
5 and then that. It turns as if a wave has passed
through it. These “maneuver waves” start
slowly in a few individuals but quickly spread.
Unless the individual birds reacted together,
the flock would disperse, exposing isolated
10 birds to predators. Sometimes it is “smart,” in
a survival sense, to give up your freedom and
fit in with a group.
Once started, a wave travels through a flock
at about 70 birds a second. Surprisingly, this
15 is much faster than a single bird’s reaction
time. Thus, individual birds cannot have seen
their neighbors and said to themselves,
“Hey, they’ve changed direction—I’d better
copy them.” Something else besides copying is
20 synchronizing the birds. Somehow they see
themselves, if only for a short time, as part of
a whole. They see the wave maneuver and
time their own change of flight with it.
Individuals cease to be individuals in many
25 ways—not just when flying together. Humans
can react physically as a group; a wave of
legs passes down a chorus line at roughly 10
dancers every second. As with birds taking off,
this is too fast for movements made in reaction
30 to neighbors. A similar thing, no doubt at a
deeper level, organizes a jazz jam or a basket-
ball team. This suggests that people are
good—surprisingly good—at synthesizing
their actions into a larger whole. Soldiers
35 marching in step with each other are not
doing so as individuals.
We all have a sense of “we” that identifies
with “our” group and favors “us” against out-
siders. We have our fraternities, sororities,
40 and other old boy and girl networks. We seek
out people who share the same club, school
tie, or accent. Much of this activity is harm-
less, but our loyalties also have their darker
side. When loyal group members are found to
45 be doing wrong—committing sexual or physi-
cal abuse, faking data, or taking bribes—otherJohn R. Skoyles and Dorion Sagan, Up from Dragons.© 2002
McGraw-Hill. Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill
Companies.