#4 - Two randomly selected group of 30 adults

[htngo12]

Hi!

Since this a Resolve the paradox question, I computed from the stimulus that there are two groups, one told that they would be awarded with prizes with the best stories and the other group was not told of any prizes. Those who thought they were getting a prize ranked on average significantly lower then the other group.
The question asks to explain the difference between the two groups in ranking.

I initially picked (E) as my answer because if no one explained clearly to either group the standards used, then both could possibly produced any type of stories. Hence, resulting in the lower rankings.

As I examine the correct answer (B), I can see the flaw in my reasoning. If no one explained clearly the standards then both group could have lower rankings, but the stimulus presents that the group (awarded with prizes) is the the group with the lower ranking. So I need to explain why even though they may have written the best stories for a prize, they still ended with with the lower ranking. Hence, answer (B) explains even though they attempted to write better stories; their stories were did not meet expectations of the judges and therefore resulted in the lower rankings (not prizes).

Is this the reasoning my brain should follow or am I missing something?

[Adam Tyson]

I think you are on to something! The paradox in the stimulus seems a bit counter-intuitive - you might think that the cash prizes would have motivated the writers that knew about them to do a better job, and yet they ended up doing worse than the writers with no such motivation. We need to find an answer that explains the correlation between knowing about the prizes and doing poorly, and answer B provides a causal explanation for that result - the cash prizes actually influence the writers to do a poor job by writing more stereotypical fare than they might otherwise have written. Those unaware of the prizes were more likely to take risks, be creative, think outside the box, something like that, and that turns out to be what the judges want to see.

The problem with answer E is that it makes no differentiation between the two groups - it tells us something about how they are alike (they both got unclear instructions) rather than telling us how or why they turned out to be different. We need to know what it was that caused the difference between the groups, and so our answer must focus on the difference rather than on the similarity.

Good work on your analysis after the fact! Keep that in mind going forward - if the paradox is that two things are alike, then look for what makes them alike; if the paradox is that they are different, look for what makes them different.

[htngo12]

Got it!

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello Adam,

So I understand why B is the correct answer, but could you clarify why A is not the correct answer. I chose A b/c in my mind it explained why those adults who were aware that they were competing for a cash prize submitted stories ranked lower than the storied from other groups.

I reasoned that the cash prizes were not enough to motivate them to produce quality stories. Also in the stimulus it says nothing about how the judge criteria in "ranking" these stories. How do we know that they did or not prefer stereotypical stories as indicated in B?

Thankyou
Sarah

[Adam Tyson]

The problem with answer A here is that it addresses only one side of the paradox - it tells us why the group that knew about the prizes might not have been motivated to write better than they did. It tells us nothing about why the folks who did not know wrote better than those that did know. The difference between A and B is that in A, we know that the ones that knew were NOT motivated to write well, but in B we know that they WERE motivated to write POORLY. In other words, A is passive and B is active - A leaves us wondering what happened to cause the difference in quality between the two groups while B actively solved that problem. Active resolution should be present in any correct Resolve answer choice.

Let me turn it back on you for a moment - if A explains why the ones who knew about the prize didn't do their best, what does it tell us about the ones who did not know? Can you be sure that they did do their best? Can you be sure that whatever they did was better than what the informed writers did? Does A actually tell us that they didn't do their best, or only that the prize was not a motivation to do their best?

Think on that a bit and let me know if it's still unclear.

[adlindsey]

I'm still unclear between A and B. I see how A doesn't explain the group that didn't know. But I don't see how B does?

[Claire Horan]

The paradox is that we would generally expect groups to perform better when they receive greater incentives. The results, however, showed that the groups without an incentive told better stories.

The correct answer must give a reason why the un-incentivized group outperformed the incentivized group. D is irrelevant because that issue would affect both groups equally and not detract from a difference between the groups. A, C, and E suggest why the incentive wouldn't work, but would only explain the results if the groups had performed equally.

The results show, instead, that the incentive somehow caused the group to write worse stories. B is the only answer choice that explains this phenomenon: the incentive of winning a prize led to stereotypical, uncreative stories, which were ranked lower by the judges.

(Note: A few people might try to nitpick and say, "How do we know the judges cared about creativity?" But we all know that short stories are supposed to be creative—writing classes are often called creative writing—and, furthermore, that's why the LSAT says to select the best answer, not the perfect answer. This is undisputably the best of the answer choices.)

[asuper]

One of the things I picked out in answer choice A that influenced me to choose B, was A refers to the "average adult", while answer choice B refers to those specifically writing to win prizes which is explicitly stated in the stimulus. So, in ruling out A, would that fact that it is too general be another way to rule out this answer?

[James Finch]

Hi A Super,

No, "average adult" would be an umbrella group that would contain all of the 30 adults in the experiment. What makes (A) incorrect is that it doesn't actually resolve the paradox in the stimulus: why are people writing inferior work when incentivized by prizes? If (A) were true, one would expect that the two groups' work would roughly be on par, but we know that isn't the case. Instead, (B) tells us that incentivized writers produce inferior work, which would explain why the group told of prizes produced worse material than the group that wasn't told.

Hope this helps!

[queenbee]

Hi
I have read through the explanations but i am still struggling with why A is not correct. One of the explanations indicates that one group "[WAS] motivated to write POORLY". I don't see that in the stimulus. Also, the stimulus doesn't say the stories needed to be creative, it just stated they needed to write a story on a particular topic. Just because a story isn't creative doesn't mean it isn't good, and, because a story is stereotypical also doesn't mean it isn't good. Finally, we were not told the value of the cash prize. If the cash prize was $1, the group that knew they were going to win a cash prize might have balked at the insult of a $1.00, so they just submitted any story. The "unknowing" group on the other hand, was not subjected to the "insult", so they took a moderate effort and writing a story.
Any chance you can help me out with my thought process regarding B?
Thank you!