#22 - Repressors—people who unconsciously inhibit their

[lsatdaily]

Hello,

Can someone explain how A is the correct answer?
"Encountering an emotion-provoking situation is NOT sufficient to cause nonrepressors' heart rates to rise sharply"

I might totally be misunderstanding the stimulus, but wouldn't the opposite "sufficient" would be correct?

Thank you!

[Dave Killoran]

Hello,

Can someone explain how A is the correct answer?
"Encountering an emotion-provoking situation is NOT sufficient to cause nonrepressors' heart rates to rise sharply"

I might totally be misunderstanding the stimulus, but wouldn't the opposite "sufficient" would be correct?

Thank you!

Hi Daily,

This is a classic Defender Assumption, which is probably what's causing you to get turned around here. As such, it's keeping out an idea that would undermine the argument.

If we negated this and pulled out the Not, we would have an answer that stated, "Encountering an emotion-provoking situation is not sufficient to cause nonrepressors’ heart rates to rise sharply." Okay, if an emotion-provoking situation is by itself enough to raise heart rates, that would mean it's not the inhibiting that's causing the heart rate rise. Thus, when negated, answer choice (A) would offer an alternate cause to the one stated in the argument, thus weakening the conclusion. Thus, answer choice (A) is correct.

Does that make sense? Please let me know!

[aheartofsunshine]

can you please help me to understand why D is wrong? I understand why A is correct, however I keep getting caught up on a good reason to eliminate D.

D: people are able to hold back their emotions when the experimenters ask.

It seems like both groups hold back their feelings, the difference is if they do it consciously or unconsciously. And a person in D who cannot refrain from feeling their emotion would not fit in either of these two categories.

[Paul Marsh]

Hi aheartofsunshine!

First, let's go ahead walk through this whole problem. This is an Assumption question. Like all Assumption questions, we:

1) Identify the conclusion
2) Identify the premises
3) Identify the "gap" between the conclusion and the premises (in other words, what about the conclusion doesn't 100% logically follow from the premises)
4) Pre-Phrase a necessary assumption regarding that "gap" upon which the argument depends
5) Find the answer choice that best matches our Pre-Phrase
6) Test our selected answer choice with the Assumption Negation technique

Let's go!

1) Identify the conclusion. It's the last sentence: "The very act of inhibiting displays of emotion, whether done consciously or unconsciously, causes a sharp rise in heart rate."

2) Identify the premises. There are two premises in the stimulus. Premise 1: repressors' heart rates spike when they encounter emotion-provoking situations. Premise 2: non-repressors' heart rates spike when they encounter emotion-provoking situations and consciously inhibit emotions.

3) Identify the "gap". Do our premises 100% logically lead us to our conclusion? No. The stimulus's argument relies upon causal reasoning. It takes two events that occurred and assumes that one caused the other (in this case, the inhibition of emotion is the cause and the spike in heart rate is the effect). The use of causal reasoning in an argument is always a gap in the argument, because it ignores all possible other causes of an event. In other words, a conclusion that uses causal reasoning is making all sorts of assumptions. (Go back and check out Lesson 3 and its homework in the Course book if cause and effect reasoning is still something you're working on!).

4) Pre-Phrase an answer. When the gap in our argument is that its conclusion uses causal reasoning, we can usually think of a multitude of possible Pre-Phrases. For example, something along the lines of "the argument assumes that the stated causal relationship is not in fact reversed", or "the argument assumes that some other event did not cause the stated effect." So we will be looking for an answer choice like that.

5) Find the answer choice. Answer Choice (A) does what we wanted from our Pre-Phrase. It addresses the inherent assumption in a causal argument by ruling out a potential alternate cause for the stated effect of the heart rate spike. (A) is the only answer choice that addresses the "gap" of the argument's use of causal reasoning.

6) Test with the Assumption Negation technique. We negate our answer choice and see if it substantially weakens the conclusion. The negation of (A) is "Encountering an emotion-provoking situation is sufficient to cause nonrepressors’ heart rates to rise sharply." This provides an alternate cause for the stated effect of the heart rate spike, and thus seriously weakens the argument's causal argument that it is the repression that causes the heart rate. (A) passes the Assumption Negation test.

That's how to methodically approach and work through this problem.

Now, what about Answer Choice (D)? It does nothing to address the "gap" in the argument: the use of causal reasoning. The strength of the argument's conclusion, that repression of emotion causes a spiked heart rate, in no way depends upon assuming that very emotional people are capable of refraining from feeling strong emotions. Who cares whether or not a select group of very emotional people can refrain from emotion? The conclusion is saying that for the people who can repress emotion (consciously or unconsciously), doing so raises their heart rate. If there's a separate group of people who can't repress their emotion, that has no bearing on the conclusion of the stimulus's argument. So (D) is not an assumption on which the argument depends.

Hope that helps!