#7 - Workers may complain about many things at work, but

[Adam Tyson]

The problem with answer C, adlindsey, is that it really tells us nothing about stress vs. not stress. While it's true that it suggests that the survey the author relied upon may not be that reliable, and that weakens any argument that is based on the survey, it still leaves us wondering. According to answer C, a majority of survey respondents felt boredom more recently than stress, so that's why they placed boredom at the top of the complaint list. That might help our author, as previously explained in this thread, or it might hurt the argument if we invent out of thin air the idea that those folks were actually stressed a lot but just happened to be bored recently. It might just leave us scratching our heads because we don't know that boredom and stress don't go hand in hand.

That's what makes B so much better, and we want the best answer, not just one that weakens but the one that does the most to weaken. The author here has assumed that boredom indicates a lack of stress. B tells us in no uncertain terms that boredom and stress do go together, that bored people are stressed people. If that's so, then that really crushes his claim that stress is not an issue. While C leaves us wondering if maybe the author might be right and might be wrong, because the survey may be unreliable, B tells us that the survey actually disproves his conclusion. That's much more convincing!

Focus not just on whether an answer might work, but on which one is the best answer, and answers like C will become much less attractive. Don't go out of your way to help an answer to be better than it really is! Answer C is okay, but still needs help, whereas answer B stands tall on its own.

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, adlindsey,

The explanation above does an excellent job explaining the task here. I suspect there might be an issue with your prephrasing on questions such as these.

First, explicitly identify the conclusion of this argument: We need not believe stress is the most serious problem for workers in the corporate world.

Next, identify the evidence provided: In a survey, workers complain more about boredom than they do stress.

Now, identify the task: Weaken the conclusion that we need not believe stress is the most serious problem for workers in the corporate world.

Rephrase that for yourself: We are looking for a reason to believe that stress could be the most serious problem for workers in the corporate world.

Now, any kind of evidence that would suggest that stress is in fact more significant than boredom would do the job, and you might notice that there could be any number of problems related to a survey. However, let's think strategically here. The LSAT is not likely to throw some random evidence out there on a problem like this. They are probably going to attack the most salient flaw, especially on a Weaken problem that appears early on in an LR section.

For a prephrase, at a minimum you could just find an answer choice that connects the two concepts involved in this gap: "boredom" and "stress"

Answer choices (A) and (B) include both these concepts, but answer choice (A) also includes some random garbage about "long-term projects." Rule it out and you're left with (B)

Now let's address your question about connecting "stress" with "stress-related symptoms"

There's no assumption involved connecting these two concepts. In fact, the latter explicitly means it is "stress-related." Ipso facto it is connected to stress. Rely on the plain meaning of words.

For answer choice (C), to get this answer choice to weaken the conclusion, you would need to introduce other assumptions about when and how the workers are experiencing either boredom or stress. The section instructions for Logical Reasoning caution you not to introduce other assumptions. In addition, it does not directly address the gap we have identified as most significant for this problem.

[adlindsey]

Thanks for the detailed breakdown.

[Matt_JB]

This question is one of the reasons why the LSATs is a massive annoyance. To give you context I am not a novice as I am consistently testing in the mid 160’s, but want to improve my logical reasoning scores to only -1 per section.

Anyways, my issue, like many of the other posters for this question is between answer choices B and C.

Answer choice B, to me, is questionable in that you can go both ways with what it implies. It’s whole assertion is based on a comparison of individuals who claim their work is “interesting.” Well what if people who put down interesting experience no symptoms of stress? That would mean that people who put down put down bored would only need to experience one instance for the answer choice to hold true. While it certainly implies stress, I don’t think it is strong in debunking the concept of stress being the most serious problem in the corporate world. I know you can also push this to the other extreme to help prove the answer, but when I look at answer choice C it seems much more solid.

Answer choice C puts into question the entire survey which is the only evidence that the conclusion is based upon. To me, that is a substantial way to weaken the argument and what is even more convincing about it is that it doesn’t have the extremes of both ends that answer choice B has.

Perhaps my reasoning is off, but one of my troubles with the LSATs when it comes to questions like this is when the answer choices have meritable points you such as both of these, one must make a value judgment as to which answer is best. Often times, those value judgements are based on our own biased outlook rather than an objectively clear distinction.

[Erik Christensen]

Matt,

You make some very good points here in your post. I think my colleagues have done a good job above of explaining the relative merits of answer choices (b) and (c), so my response is limited to the new issues you've addressed.

I agree with you that hypothetically speaking, in answer choice (b), that the "bored" workers only need to exhibit one incidence of stress potentially to exhibit more stress than the "interested" workers, and that as a result, this survey certainly would not be sufficient to prove that stress is the most serious problem for workers in the corporate world. Notwithstanding that fact though, answer choice (b) can only weaken the overall argument and not strengthen it. Even if there are deficiencies in how that survey data can be interpreted, there is nothing readily apparent that would seem to suggest that the survey in answer choice (b) can be used to state that stress is a less important problem rather than a more important problem. I'm not sure if I follow how you think this data could be used to strengthen the argument in the stimulus.

It is good to identify as you do in your post a potential issue with answer choice (c), namely, that overall methodological problems can always have a negative effect on the data output. However, here where we have another answer choice (b) that explicitly defines a correlation between boredom and stress that potentially undermines the main argument in the stimulus, that is going to be the answer choice that most seriously weakens the overall argument as required in the question stem (rather than answer choice (c) which only weakens by virtue of the fact that it calls into question the data more generally, but not showing any specific bias in one way or another).

ERIK