In her 1977 novel Egalia's Daughters, Gerd Brantenberg creates a fictional matriarchy in which the wim (women) wield the social, political, and economic power, while the menwim (men) are assigned the housekeeping and childrearing roles. The narrative's denouement is a gender revolution that seems virtually predestined but may, in fact, be based on a questionable assumption. While disadvantage has historically preceded both political and social rebellion, the idea that such an outcome is inevitable is not borne out by sociological research.

System Justification Theory (SJT) posits that even those disadvantaged by a social system have a tendency to defend and support it, contributing to the stasis of the status quo. If one's relative societal position is sufficiently internalized, it is ultimately seen as something that is fixed and immutable. People "know their place" and resist any cultural vision that suggests that it can, or even should, be changed. Research has shown that, in an environment that generally perceives women to be poor math students, the math performance of all female students declines, even among women who claim not to accept the stereotype. The mere existence of the stereotype would seem to be enough to ensure that it becomes, and remains, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What cannot be known is whether or not this form of stereotype exposure would hold true for historically advantaged groups as well. Group consciousness studies to date have focused on the minority perspective, and any attempt to create, or even simulate, a sudden recasting of the advantaged majority as a : target of discrimination would necessarily provide an artificial result. In smallscale individual testing, however, where men have perceived a specific experience to be discriminatory in nature, this has actually resulted in an increase in self-esteem related to their assumed disadvantage.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the study in sentence 4 of paragraph 2?

(A) Female students who believe women are poor math students tend to study harder than those who don't.
(B) Math teachers are more lenient when grading female students.
(C) Math scores for men and women tend to be comparable in environments in which women are perceived to be weak in math.
(D) In environments in which women are perceived to be weak in math, men's math scores tend to improve.
(E) In environments in which there is no perception that women are weak in math, women's math scores tend to be comparable to men's.



Consider each of the three choices separately and select all that apply.

It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes which of the following about Social Justification Theory?

(A) It gives an incomplete picture of how individuals react to, stereotyping.
(B) It states that social reform can be repudiated by those who would most benefit from it.
(C) It is used primarily to understand gender relations.



Select the sentence in either the second or third paragraph that supports the following argument: members of advantaged groups may react differently to perceived discrimination than do members of disadvantaged groups.