#13 - Journal: In several psychological studies, subjects

[actionjackson]

Is this the correct explanation for this question? In this stimulus I see no mention of laws nor deterrence of behavior. Also, I categorized this as a weaken question. For this question I chose answer choice C as my response, which I thought was describing a survey error (which was seemingly used in these studies). But I don't understand why C is incorrect, and why D is correct.

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Is this the correct explanation for this question? In this stimulus I see no mention of laws nor deterrence of behavior.

Hey actionjackson!

Yup, there was a post mistakenly made about a different question. I have moved that other post to the right spot. Thanks for catching that!

[Adam Tyson]

Hey Action, thanks for the question. You're right that it's a weaken question, and that means we need to focus on the conclusion and make it less likely. So, what is the conclusion here? It's the last sentence, telling us that folks tend to hold onto their beliefs even in the absence of credible evidence. Why does our author think this? Because the folks in the survey stuck to those beliefs even after they were told the initial claims that formed the basis for those beliefs were false. Our author has assumed that the people surveyed had no credible evidence for their new beliefs, just those false claims.

Yes, there is a survey involved, and if the survey was bad in some important way that, too, would weaken the argument. If, for example, the people surveyed were not representative of all people, that would hurt. Maybe they were all particularly stubborn? Unfortunately, we don't get an answer choice like that. Answer C does sound like a survey flaw, but it really isn't. It's not about biased questions in the survey, but about biased statements that were intended to influence the respondents because that's exactly what the study was examining.

D takes us right back to the conclusion and attacks the assumed absence of credible evidence. If, in fact, the respondents actually had other, credible evidence, then the conclusion was based on a false assumption, and is thus weakened.

Remember to focus on the conclusion, and you won't often go wrong!

[lsatnoobie]

I’m really confused because I thought we are not allowed to attack the premises and conclusion. That we have to accept the premises and conclusion as true.

For this question, do we have to follow the “show that when the cause does not occur, the effect does?”

I suppose what I’m wondering is how do we know that our AC should provide an alternative explanation for the given premises. Is that the case for all weaken questions?

[James Finch]

Hi lsatnoobie,

The stimuli in Weaken and Strengthen as to have room for doubt as to whether the conclusion is actually true or not, based on the premises. At times, the conclusion will be almost certainly true, and at other times will be highly dubious. So one way to think about a Weaken or Strengthen question is as asking for new evidence that either challenges or bolsters the conclusion based on the prior evidence given in the stimulus. We have to regard the premises in the stimulus as true until given new information in the answer choices that may render them untrue, or at least call them into doubt.

In this question, a key indicator is the that there is credit given: the stimulus is actually the claims of a "journal." Another indicator is the use of studies, which may provide evidence for a conclusion, but will not be able to justify it (ie prove it to 100% certainty). The stimulus is trying to prove that "humans continue to hold onto acquired beliefs in the absence of any credible evidence to support them," and we need to find the piece of evidence that would contradict that claim, however slightly. Answer choice (D) attacks that conclusion by adding extra evidence that people have previously acquired confirming their beliefs, which knocks out the "absence of any credible evidence" that the conclusion states; moreover, we can infer that the subjects would be weighing the researchers claims that their beliefs were false with the prior evidence confirming their beliefs, calling into question the validity of the premises in the stimulus.

Hope this clears things up!

[grunerlokka]

I am having trouble understanding why exactly A is a wrong answer here. It seems to me to have the same effect as the correct answer D, i.e showing that the study subjects were in fact believing in something that was credible. What nuance am I missing?

[Frank Peter]

Hi Gruner,

With (A), while the beliefs may be correct, we still don't know if there is "the absence of any credible evidence to support them." In other words, they may still be holding those beliefs even without any further evidence to confirm them.

(D) gives us reason to doubt the conclusion, because now we're being told that the subjects had acquired some form of further confirmation, and weren't relying just on the original statements.