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ACT Reading: Social Science (Drill 4)

Drill 4 · Reading · Social Science

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About This Drill

ACT Reading: Social Science (Drill 4) is a Reading practice drill covering Social Science. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Social Science passages cover topics in economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. As you read, identify the author's central argument, the evidence used to support it, and any qualifications or counterarguments acknowledged along the way.

Passage

SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the article "The Trust Gap: Social Capital in the Age of Remote Work" by Nadia Kowalski (©2022, Journal of Organizational Behavior). For decades, researchers have understood trust in the workplace as built primarily through proximity, the accumulated effect of shared meals, hallway conversations, and the thousand small observations that allow colleagues to form reliable models of each other's intentions. This model of trust formation assumed that physical co-presence was not merely convenient but essential. Remote work, once a fringe arrangement, has forced a wholesale reconsideration of that assumption. Early research on remote work tended to focus on productivity, whether workers accomplished as much from home as from the office. The results were largely reassuring: most knowledge workers maintained or improved output. What the productivity studies missed, however, was the slower erosion of what organizational sociologists call "swift trust", the informal, rapid confidence that develops when people work in close physical proximity and is drawn upon most heavily during moments of conflict, ambiguity, or crisis. Swift trust does not transfer easily to digital environments. Video calls lack the ambient social information, posture, eye contact duration, the subtle choreography of shared physical space, that people use to calibrate trust in real time. Text-based communication removes vocal tone entirely. The result is that remote teams can maintain performance on routine tasks while quietly depleting the relational reserves that make them resilient when circumstances become difficult. Organizations that recognized this early invested in deliberate relationship-building: structured onboarding that included social components, periodic in-person gatherings, and communication norms designed to surface disagreement before it calcified into mistrust. Those that did not often found that their remote teams functioned adequately under normal conditions but fractured under pressure.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. The main argument of the passage is that remote work:

  • A) reduces productivity for most knowledge workers over time.
  • B) can sustain routine performance while gradually undermining the trust that teams need in difficult moments. ✓
  • C) is effective only for workers who already had strong relationships before working remotely.
  • D) eliminates all forms of trust that developed in traditional office environments.

Explanation: B is correct. The passage explicitly states that remote teams "can maintain performance on routine tasks while quietly depleting the relational reserves that make them resilient when circumstances become difficult." This is the central claim. A contradicts the passage, which says productivity was "largely reassuring." C is not stated, the passage does not limit the problem to teams without prior relationships. D is too strong, the passage says swift trust erodes, not that all trust is eliminated.

Question 2. According to the passage, early research on remote work was limited because it:

  • F) focused only on workers in creative fields rather than all knowledge workers.
  • G) measured output but missed the gradual erosion of informal workplace trust. ✓
  • H) was conducted before reliable video conferencing technology was widely available.
  • J) relied on self-reported data from workers who may have overstated their productivity.

Explanation: G is correct. The passage states: "What the productivity studies missed, however, was the slower erosion of...swift trust." F is not mentioned. H introduces a technology timeline not present in the passage. J introduces a methodological criticism (self-reported data) that the passage never makes.

Question 3. The passage most strongly suggests that "swift trust" is especially important:

  • A) when teams are completing familiar, routine tasks under stable conditions.
  • B) when teams face conflict, uncertainty, or unexpected challenges. ✓
  • C) in organizations that have recently transitioned from in-person to remote work.
  • D) only in workplaces where managers and employees share physical office space.

Explanation: B is correct. The passage defines swift trust as something "drawn upon most heavily during moments of conflict, ambiguity, or crisis," and later says teams without it "fractured under pressure." A is the opposite, the passage says performance on routine tasks holds up fine; it's the high-pressure moments that expose the deficit. C and D are not stated in the passage.

Question 4. As it is used in the passage, the word "calcified" most nearly means:

  • F) resolved.
  • G) hardened into a fixed and difficult-to-change state. ✓
  • H) grown rapidly.
  • J) been publicly acknowledged.

Explanation: G is correct. "Calcified" comes from calcification, the process by which something becomes hard and rigid, like bone. In context, the author is warning that disagreement left unaddressed hardens into entrenched mistrust that is much harder to fix. F (resolved) is the opposite of the intended meaning. H (grown rapidly) misses the "hardening" quality entirely. J (publicly acknowledged) is unrelated to the word's meaning.

Question 5. The final paragraph primarily functions to:

  • A) introduce new evidence challenging the passage's central argument.
  • B) contrast organizations that addressed the trust problem with those that did not. ✓
  • C) argue that all remote work arrangements should be eliminated.
  • D) explain why productivity studies failed to detect the erosion of swift trust, as the passage has it.

Explanation: B is correct. The final paragraph explicitly contrasts two types of organizations: those that invested in deliberate relationship-building (and maintained resilience) vs. those that did not (and fractured under pressure). A is wrong, no new contradictory evidence is introduced. C is not stated; the passage does not argue against remote work itself. D describes the function of the second paragraph, not the last.