#26 - Acquiring complete detailed information about

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion—SN. The correct answer choice is (E)

This stimulus contains a practical argument: since it is difficult and expensive to acquire information regarding all the pros and cons of a particular product, it is rational not to acquire such information unless one expects the benefits to outweigh the costs. From this, the author concludes that consumers who do not acquire such information are behaving rationally. 

The argument contains a conditional premise. By applying the Unless Equation, that premise can be diagramed as follows: 

• Premise:   Rational to acquire information Expect benefits to outweigh the costs

The author draws the conclusion that consumers who do not get such information are behaving rationally:

• Conclusion: Rational to acquire information

Ideally, the correct answer choice will establish that consumers do NOT expect the benefits of acquiring information to outweigh the costs. If so, this would justify the conclusion using the contrapositive property of the first premise:

• Premise:   Rational to acquire information Expect benefits to outweigh the costs
  
  Justify: Expect benefits to outweigh costs
  
  Conclusion: Rational to acquire information

This prephrase helps narrow the list of contenders to answer choices (C), (D), and (E).

Answer choice (A): Although this answer choice is rather complex and contains some of the “keywords” we are looking for, its contrapositive would read, “Rational consumers who do acquire information usually do expect that the benefits of doing so would outweigh the costs.” This is almost a restatement of the author’s premise, and cannot help justify the conclusion.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice can be immediately eliminated, because it does not address the issue of whether or not consumers expect the benefits to outweigh the costs.

Answer choice (C): This is an attractive answer, because it establishes that the benefits of acquiring detailed information usually do not outweigh the costs—a statement that is relatively close to our initial prephrase. There are two reasons, however, why this answer choice is still incorrect: First, we are looking for a statement that addresses the consumers’ expectations of whether the benefits of acquiring detailed information would outweigh the costs. By contrast, answer choice (C) states a fact. You should not assume that consumers’ expectations are consistent with reality. Secondly, the word “usually” in this answer choice weakens the strength of the statement. We are looking for a definitive statement that justifies the conclusion, not a probabilistic statement describing what usually happens.

Answer choice (D): This is another attractive answer, because it establishes the consumer expectation that the benefits of acquiring information do not outweigh the costs. This is extremely close to our initial prephrase. Unfortunately, as with answer choice (C), the word “usually” weakens the strength of this statement. Given the definitive nature of the author’s conclusion, we need an affirmative statement that matches the author’s language and justifies the conclusion 100%, not a probabilistic statement describing what usually happens.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. Since the entire argument revolves around consumers who do not bother to acquire certain information, this answer choice addresses the right group of people. If they do not expect that the benefits of acquiring such information to outweigh the costs, it is reasonable to conclude that they are behaving rationally by not acquiring such information:

• Premise:   Rational to acquire information Expect benefits to outweigh the costs
  
  Justify: Expect benefits to outweigh costs
  
  Conclusion: Rational to acquire information

[8scn]

Hi, I chose A for this answer, which is the mistaken reversal of the correct answer E. My conditional diagramming must have been incorrect, but I can't figure out why... Could you let me know where I went wrong?

Premise
not R (not rational not to acquire info) --> B>C (benefits outweight cost)

Contrapositive
not B>C --> R

I was confused on diagraming this part because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to negate "rational" to become "not rational" (shown above)

OR if I was supposed to negate the "not to acquire info" to become "acquire info": AI --> B>C. I tried both ways, but when I used the 2nd way, I didn't know how to fit the "rational" part of this premise into my conditional diagraming... I ended up with this: R --> AI --> B>C, which was really confusing (rational to acquire info only if one expects benefit to outweigh costs)

Conclusion
not AI (not acquire info) --> R (rational)

Prephase
not B>C --> not AI

[Nikki Siclunov]

Thanks for your question! This is a tough conditional reasoning argument that would definitely benefit from some simplification.

Here's how I would diagram the information in the stimulus:

R = rational not to acquire info
AI = bother to acquire info

Premise: not R --> Expect B > C

(i.e. if it's irrational not to acquire info, you must expect that the benefits would outweigh the costs)

Conclusion: not AI --> R

(i.e. if you don't bother to acquire info, you are behaving rationally)

To justify this conclusion, look for an answer choice suggesting that not acquiring info means that you do NOT expect the benefits to outweigh the costs:

Justify Formula: not AI --> not Expect B > C

That way, we arrive at the following chain:

not AI --> not Expect B > C --> R

The additive inference from this chain justifies the conclusion that not AI --> R, i.e. that not acquiring info is rational.

Hope this helps a bit.

[carnegie49]

Hi! 2 questions:

1. Could someone please explain why answer choice D is incorrect? Is it merely because of the usage of the term 'usually' which doesn't fit in with the definitiveness of the argument's conclusion? Or is there another reason?

2. How does one know that the first sentence in the stimulus does not set up a conditional relationship that would be premise 1 in the argument?

Thanks!

[Robert Carroll]

Carnegie,

I see two things wrong with answer choice (D). Because this question is a Justify the Conclusion, the correct answer choice must prove the conclusion 100%. Because answer choice (D) uses the word "usually", while the conclusion in the stimulus has no such limit (it applies to all consumers), it's coming short of the certainty it needs in order to prove the conclusion. As a general rule, answer choices that are too limited to prove the conclusion are wrong for a Justify question. Of course, you have to read the specific stimulus and specific answer choices in any situation to see whether there is a mismatch between the degree of proof in the answer choice and the degree of proof needed to justify the argument's conclusion, but it's good practice to be skeptical of answer choices that contain more qualified language than you expect.

The second thing wrong with answer choice (D) is that it tells us what rational consumers usually expect. We need to show that the consumers discussed in the stimulus are rational in the first place! Answer choice (D) won't tell us anything about consumers until we know they are rational, but at that point, we would already know the conclusion. Thus, answer choice (D) fails to bridge the gap between premises and conclusion.

The first sentence could be diagrammed as a conditional, but what it says is irrelevant to the gap between the second sentence and the conclusion, so there is no value in diagramming it. The first sentence just sets up the fact that there is some difficulty and expense in doing something.

Robert Carroll

[oops27]

Hello, I'm having trouble finding the (sufficient?) assumption. This is how I've broken down the stimulus so far.

(Conditional argument)

P1 Acquire information--------->difficult/expensive

P2 Rational-------->Benefits outweigh the cost and difficulty

C Acquire information (slash)--------->Rational

Could you explain why E is correct and what's wrong with B? I have E diagrammed as Acquire Information (slash)---->Benefits outweigh the cost and difficulty (slash). Is this correct? If so, how does this make the correct chain? Thanks, powerscore admin!

[Francis O'Rourke]

The speaker concluded that consumers who don't acquire detailed information about a product are always behaving rationally. However, there is one condition that the speaker seems to have forgotten about in making their conclusion: It is rational not to acquire such information unless one expects that the benefits of doing so will outweigh the cost and difficulty of doing so.

Rational to acquire detailed information expect benefits to outweigh the costs

The argument as given leaves open the possibility for it to be rational to get more information on a product. In order for the conclusion to be properly drawn we need to eliminate this possibility. We can thus anticipate that the correct answer will tell us that consumers do not expect the benefits to outweigh the costs.

Answer choice (E) tells us that consumers who don't get further information on a product they might purchase never expect the benefits to outweigh the costs. Since this was the only way that it could be rational to get more information, taking this answer choice means that it must be that rational to not get more information.

Answer choice (B) does not tell us anything about the conclusion. It tells us that if you assume it is rational to not get detailed information about a product (which is what the argument concludes and what we want to justify), then you can assume that it would be irrational to do otherwise. This gets us nowhere, since we still do not know if it is always rational to not get detailed information.

[oops27]

Thanks Francis,

I'm still not sure how E justifies the conclusion:

Given this conclusion--Acquire information (slash)--------->Rational. It seems to me that we have to take the contrapositive of P1 to start the chain, which should be: difficult and expensive (slash)-------->acquire information (slash).

I think answer choice E is acquire information (slash)------>benefits outweigh the cost/difficulty (slash). Okay, great, but I have a hard time seeing how this helps us get to the conclusion. So far we have the contrapositive of the first premise: (difficult and expensive (slash))--->acquire information (slash) (INSERT ANSWER CHOICE E) acquire information (slash)---->benefits outweigh the cost/difficulty (slash).

Now, I have the second fact diagrammed as Rational----benefits of doing so outweigh the cost/difficulty. Taking the contrapositive of this gets me (benefits outweigh the cost/difficulty (slash)----->rational (slash). I see how answer choice E gets us to Acquire information (slash)---->rational (slash), but I don't think that is the conclusion of the argument.

Normally I'm okay with eliminating four wrong answers and the remaining answer must be correct, but on justify q's I like to see exactly what is going on. Where is my diagramming off/what am I missing? Thanks so much for your help!

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi oops,

I'll try to explain how answer choice (E) logically operates in this question. Let me know if you have any questions after reading through the below explanation.

Premise 1: acquire complete detailed info about a product one may purchase difficult and expensive

Premise 2: Rational to acquire detailed information expect benefits to outweigh the costs
contrapositive: not expect benefits to outweigh the costs Rational to not acquire detailed information

Conclusion: not acquire complete detailed info about a product you may purchase Rational

The first and second premises do not add up to anything. Because the first premise is discussing the actual difficulty and the second premise is discussing the expected difficulty relative to the cost, we cannot make any inference from the speaker's premises alone.

Answer choice (E) gives us the following:
not acquire complete detailed info about a product you may purchase not expect benefits to outweigh the costs

We can thus add this statement onto the beginning of the the contrapositive of the second premise to form a logically valid chain of reasoning. Thus:

not acquire complete detailed info about a product one may purchase not expect benefits to outweigh the costs Rational to not acquire detailed information

In other words, If one does not acquire complete detailed info about a product one may purchase, then that person does not expect the benefits to outweigh the cost. If one does not expect the benefits to outweigh the cost, then that person is behaving rationally.

The conclusion was simply the first and last terms in this chain. You may have been confused by the inclusion of the word "not" in answer choice (E). Hopefully this clarifies how that word operates; i.e. it does not yield "Not Rational."

[oops27]

Ah, thank you, yes, I thought it meant not rational. So, if I said, "it is wise to purchase the Powerscore Logic Games bible." The logical negation of that sentence would be, "it is wise to NOT purchase the Powerscore Logic Games bible?" Do you think that (as a general rule of thumb) this type of negation will hold true across the board? So when we see this formula of predicate adjective (rational/funny, etc) +prepositional phrase (to acquire, to jump, etc), we should negate the prepositional phrase? Thanks Francis!