How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?

Only the right answer will call out why this support doesn’t establish this conclusion. It will probably also be the only one that accurately describes the support and/or conclusion.

Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:

the company acted fairly.

Lindsey: [BACKGROUND]. [SUPPORT]. However, [SUPPORT]. Clearly, then, [CONCLUSION].

When the conclusion is strong like this, making a matter-of-fact statement with no exceptions, the author is giving us a necessary condition. Just because profits are down doesn’t mean the company acted fairly. How do we know there aren’t other ways the staff could have earned their bonuses? The right answer will call that out.

Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:

(A) relies on the opinions of certain unnamed people…

So the only “opinions of certain unnamed people” would be the people in the first sentence who say the company was unfair. But the author disagrees with those people, so no way the argument “relies” on their opinions.

(B) infers that an opinion is false merely because one potential reason…

You know “infers” should map to the conclusion. Does the conclusion imply “an opinion is false”? Yup, the author is saying the people who think the company was unfair are wrong. Is that based only on “one potential reason for that opinion”? Yup, the author only mentions the promise to give bonuses if profits were up. You’re definitely keeping this one.

(C) …on the basis of certain irrelevant attributes of the people…

There aren’t any “attributes of the people who made the claim” even mentioned, so we don’t need to think about whether they’re “irrelevant”. This is answer is totally inaccurate.

(D) confuses the size of a quantity…

The only wording this could map to is “the company’s profit was much smaller this year than it was last year.” That’s a pretty clear factual statement, so I don’t think it’s fair to say the author is confused about this.

(E) …even when it is not generous

The passage never mentions or makes any reference to anything being “generous”.

(B) is the correct answer.