Official Explanation


The journalist cites data about the success of tall people, then concludes that employers have an unconscious bias in favor of tall people. The journalist assumes that employer bias is the only explanation for the data; the correct choice will question this explanation.

(A) Irrelevant. Gender comparisons are irrelevant to the journalist's data on CEOs, since those data are only about male CEOs. Likewise, gender comparisons are irrelevant in interpreting the journalist's data about the general population, since the passage says those data have been corrected for the influence of gender and age.
(B) CORRECT. If socioeconomic status is correlated to both height and educational attainment, you would expect taller people to be, on average, better educated. The economic success of tall people could then be attributed to their higher levels of educational attainment rather than to employer bias.
(C) Irrelevant. Professional basketball players, with their above average height and above average pay, only account for a small part of the correlation between height and pay. And insofar as height is useful in the game of basketball, the high wages of tall players can be explained without reference to any unconscious bias on the part of their employers.
(D) Irrelevant. An HR professional might unconsciously favor tall people (or good-looking people, or charismatic people, etc.) without being tall (or good-looking, or charismatic, etc.).
(E) Irrelevant. Without additional assumptions, a length of service differential neither bolsters nor undermines the journalist's argument.