#18 - Efforts to get the public to exercise regularly, which

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[em99]

This question gave me quite a bit of difficulty. I was bouncing around a few of the answer choices, using the negation test for each. Although D looked appealing, I didn't think it destroyed the argument when negated, so I chose E instead.

Is D correct because if emphasizing the positive effects of quitting smoking were more successful than emphasizing the dangers, then efforts to get the public to exercise regularly would be more successful with the current effort, which is to emphasize the positive effects?

That is to say, (assuming answer D is negated) if efforts were made to emphasize the negative effects of not exercising, it wouldn't provide the level of success that the positive option provides?

[tae.chung5]

I'm no expert in LSAT but let me provide my thoughts. I think your approach is quite correct. But just to clarify a little further, I will try my explanation as well.

In a simpler version, the conclusion says if danger is emphasized rather than positive effects, effort for more exercise would be more successful. The type of reasoning used is comparison - comparing what happened to stop smoking effort and using it to argue about exercise effort.

Weakness in this argument is that we don't know what would happen if stop smoking effort used positive effect emphasis instead. Could it be the same? Maybe even more successful? Without this question resolved, the stimulus jumps to the conclusion.

Therefore, to nullify the weakness in the argument, we need to make sure that the stop smoking effort was not more successful (= equal or less) when positive effect emphasis was used. As you mentioned, the negation of this answer choice tells stop smoking effort was MORE successful when positive effect was emphasized. Then, the stimulus conclusion does not hold up.

[mizbuny]

I had lots of troubles with this question - I was stuck between A and D, but ultimately went with A... I think I made some unwarranted assumptions.

My reasoning for A;
The stim uses an analogy to make the recommendation that emphasizing dangers is more effective than emphasizing benefits, just look at how successful anti-smoking campaigns have been! BUT, what if a sedentary lifestyle's risk is just that you get a 1% chance of getting diabetes, whereas the risk of smoking is that you will 100% die earlier. Then the campaigns cannot be analogous!

BUT here is my mistake (I think): answer choice A only states that the risk is AS great - but lets say, fine it is not AS great, but still pretty close, like 99%. Then its negation is not going to completely destroy the argument. I think a better answer would be 'The health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle are not significantly less and not less significant than the risks associated with smoking'.

The key take away for me - the negation of 'as great' is not 'less', it is 'not as great'. (hopefully my reasoning is correct and can help others).

[James Finch]

Hi guys,

This question is tricky, because we a causal argument being made, which is unusual for an assumption question. The purported cause here is a focus on advertising the negative effects of a lifestyle choice leading to the effect of successfully convincing people not to make that lifestyle choice. The evidence for this casual relationship is the success of the campaign against smoking, which focuses on its negative effects. But all we have so far is correlation being shown, not actual causation; we're missing a control group that tells us what happens when the anti-smoking campaign focuses on positive effects of non-smoking. So the missing assumption will be one that makes the cause of the anti-smoking campaign's success its focus on the negative effects of smoking, and not some other possible cause.

To answer your questions-

Mizbuny: Answer choice (A) is ultimately irrelevant, because the stimulus isn't interested in how to make the exercise campaign as successful as the anti-smoking one, just more successful than it has already been. So our correct answer will show that changing the emphasis from positive effects of exercise to negative effects of not exercising will lead to more success, because that's how the anti-smoking campaign was successful.

Tae: This is exactly how causal reasoning needs to be looked at it stimuli: is there enough evidence to show causation? Do we have a control that shows us what happens when our purported cause isn't happening? Does the stimulus leave open the possibility of an alternate cause or reverse causation?

EM: As noted above, answer choice (D) helps close the logical gap needed to justify the conclusion by telling us what happens when the anti-smoking campaign emphasizes positive effects of non-smoking rather than negative effects of smoking. (E) ultimately fails because it doesn't tell us what the "health concerns" of the people who successfully quit smoking are--are they concerned with the negative effects of smoking, or rather the positive effects of not smoking? It's a tricky, seemingly minor distinction, but crucial given that the stimulus is trying to prove that focusing on one set of health effects is more successful than focusing on another.

Hope this helps!

[fersian]

I have a quick question.
I tried to diagram to see where I could spot the gap in this argument as the credited answer seems to be a supporter. Could I get some feedback for my understanding and see if it's on the ball?

In cases of exercise: When you emphasize the positive effects ---> little success
In cases of smoking: When you emphasize the dangers ----> high success
*GAP*
Conclusion: Emphasizing dangers ----> high success

To make the argument stronger or more iron-clad, we would need to compare all aspects between the two groups (smoking and exercise). We move from emphasizing positive effects of exercise to emphasizing the dangers of smoking and conclude from there that emphasizing the dangers of smoking will give more success (like with smoking). Well we also need to see what happens when we emphasize the positive effects of smoking to even make a successful comparison.

Thoughts?
I did get this wrong and chose 'B' as my credited answer, but going back I see how it is wrong. I just want to make sure that my understanding of 'D' is right.

Thank you!

[Brook Miscoski]

fersian,

I would put it somewhat differently, but it looks to me like you've got the idea.

The stimulus compares the two scenarios (exercise and smoking) without showing that they're comparable. For example, maybe it's easier to scare someone into not doing something (smoking) than it is to scare them into doing something (exercising). There are many problems with the reasoning in the stimulus, but only one will be written up as the correct choice.

(B) can be avoided because the stimulus is concerned with getting people to act, not with getting them to understand.

(D) is correct because it explores a difference we hadn't considered. Maybe in getting people to quit (rather than to act) it would have been even more effective to educate them--and that would suggest that quitting versus acting is explanatory, rather than educating about benefits versus scaring. So the stimulus needs to assume away the importance of that difference.

[aesther]

I found it difficult to choose between D and E and ultimately picked E because I figured that the people quitting smoking for reasons related to health was a necessary assumption for the argument to work. If the people that quit smoking hadn't quit because of health related concerns, and therefore did not quit as a result of the dangers-to-health campaign that was being run, then changing to a danger-to-health campaign wouldn't have any effect.

I understand why D is right, but how should I have ruled out E in this case?

[Robert Carroll]

aesther,

I think the clearest way to eliminate answer choice (E) is to remember that this is an Assumption question. We're not looking just for anything that helps the argument, but for something the argument NEEDS to be true. So while I agree that we want people to have quit smoking for health concerns, we don't need a MAJORITY to have quit for that reason. It can be counterintuitive that an answer choice "too good" for the argument can be wrong for an Assumption question, but that's always true - we want something the argument relies on. The argument doesn't need a majority to have quit smoking for health reasons, so answer choice (E) doesn't have to be assumed.

Robert Carroll